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Talks on Grammar 


By 

EUGENE ANDERSON 
President 

Georgia-Alabama Business College 
Macon, Georgia 



Copyright, 1918, by 
EUGENE ANDERSON 
Macon, Ga. 


Press of The J. W. Burke Company 
ifacoa, Ga. 

» t 
t r i 




50 J 519 


“K c t 


PREFACE 

The business college man who tries to equip his students 
to meet their responsibilities finds the weak places in the 
common school work of the different communities. 

The English grammar seems to be the most neglected 
study. Students have been given so little help in English 
grammar, spelling, word-building, etc., that I have sought 
to find some simpler methods than are usually employed. 
We must teach in one-tenth the time generally allowed to 
teachers in the other schools. It has for a long time been 
the custom in uncommercial sections to give children from 
eight to fifteen years in literary schools, but only three or 
four months in the vocational schools. Why this awful 
mistake was made need not be discussed here; but its bad 
results are being seen all the time. Poverty is the outcome of 
it in many cases. When an evil is seen by enough people, a 
remedy is sooner or later found and applied. Business 
colleges will in future be allowed more time than hereto¬ 
fore. Wisdom is demanding it. 

In trying to overcome deficiencies in English, I have 
given talks to the Georgia-Alabama students, and discussed 
with them the errors found in their compositions, allowing 
them to ask questions freely. These talks or lectures grad¬ 
ually attracted the attention of the public, until I was in¬ 
duced to admit the public to hear them. During 1916 this 


4 


Preface 


was done, and I also accepted invitations to lecture before 
grammar schools and the Army Y. M. C. A. The people 
who heard the talks in the Georgia-Alabama were for the 
most part college graduates, club women and other cultured 
people, and their commendation encouraged me to write the 
main points of the lectures and print them in this book 
form. The work is simple. I am seeking to give in a read¬ 
able way the things that might have escaped your memory 
or attention. I hope they will stimulate your interest in 
the study of a great language. 

Eugene Anderson 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Preface.3 

When to Begin Grammar.7 

How Grammar Starts.8 

Noun.10 

Adjective.11 

Pronoun.15 

Verb.22 

Pronouns with Verbs.29 

Adverbs.31 

Prepositions.'.38 

Conjunctions.42 

Interjection .43 

Part II—Punctuation.45 

Commas—Three Rules for.46 

Comma—Rule II.47 

Comma—When It Cannot Be Used.53 

Comma—Rule III.54 

Semicolon.56 

Period .59 

Interrogation.59 

Exclamation.59 

Abbreviations.60 

Quotations.61 

Part III—Styles.63 

Irregular Verbs.86 



























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TALKS ON GRAMMAR 


ENGLISH GRAMMAR 

We should see to it that the youth begins early to speak 
according to the simple rules of grammar. Later, when he 
goes to school, we should see to it that he is sent to teachers 
who speak according to the rules of grammar. If the child 
can speak correctly, writing correctly will be as natural as 
breathing. 

To be understood is the purpose of the language, whether 
written or spoken. The teacher’s task is first to make the 
student desire knowledge of the subject being taught. 
Without a desire for education, there will be no education. 
If your student does not want to know what you are trying 
to teach, he is not going to learn it. The teacher’s duty is 
to inspire the student mind, and the teacher has an uphill 
climb always unless he soon impresses his expertness on 
the student. 

Grammar is a simple study. There are only eight parts 
of speech. Some of them undergo changes of form, and 
these changes render the study of grammar necessary. 
Some of the strongest sentences contain nothing but a noun 
and a verb. The other six parts of speech have something 
to do with the noun and the verb. Let’s think of grammar 



as a child’s study. It is a beautiful science, if properly pre¬ 
sented. The simpler we make it, the better. 


WHAT IS GRAMMAR? 

Grammar is supposed to teach us how to put words to¬ 
gether so as to build thought. When a person speaks to us 
or writes to us, we don’t dwell on his words; we think of 
the idea or thought that he is trying to present to us, 
though the words are very necessary. The idea is clothed 
in his words. We cannot see these ideas unless we know 
some grammar. 

Grammar is not the same today as it was when man first 
began to talk. It develops with language. When speech 
was first used, one word answered for many words. 

When a child is first learning to talk, he does what a 
grown person does when he starts in to learn a new lan¬ 
guage. He does what Adam and Eve doubtless did when 
they first undertook to talk in the Garden of Eden. He uses 
only a noun to express his idea. He does not know how to 
build sentences. One word is sufficient for him. He says 
“Ma”. “Ma” comes in a hurry. She understands her new 
little lord and master to mean, “Ma, come here to me”. She 
stands waiting to hear one more word from the little tyrant. 
His next command is given with one word: “Water”! She 
runs and gets water for him. He did not say, “Bring me 


Talks on Grammar 


9 


some water”, but the one noun “water” meant as much to 
his mother as the whole sentence would have meant. 

After the new linguist gets one more idea, he says, “Cool 
water”! “Ma” runs and gets some water fresh from the 
well or some ice water. The child has expressed an addi¬ 
tional idea. He tells what kind of water. Water is the 
thing he wanted. The name of a thing or person is called 
a noun. Noun simply means name. If you call water 
“fluid”, “fluid” will be a noun. If you call it “stuff”, “stuff” 
will be a noun. A name given to anything or anybody is a 
noun. Call the baby a “tyrant” and “tyrant” will be a 
noun. Call it an “angel” and “angel” will be a noun. Call 
it a “nuisance” and “nuisance” will be a noun. The noun 
is one part of speech. The word or words used to describe 
a noun are another part of speech. When the baby said 
“cool water”, he was telling what kind of water he wanted. 
The word that tells “what kind” is always an adjective. 
“Adjective” is another part of speech. Adjectives are 
always used to describe nouns. There are eight parts of 
speech. These two are very important because they are 
used so much and in so many different ways. Two more, 
the verb and adverb, are very important for the same 


reason. 


10 


Talks on Grammar 


THE NOUN 

The noun, as you have seen, is the starting point of 
grammar. A noun is always something. If anything can 
be called by a name, that name is a noun. I see a tall 
something in the yard. If I don’t know what to call it, I 
may say it is “something”. Then “something” is a noun, 
for it is the name which I have given the thing. If I say 
it is a “curiosity”, “curiosity” is a noun. If I learn that 
the tall thing, with its long, strong arms and shimmering 
leaves, is a tree, I would say that “tree” is a noun. If I 
called it a “ghost”, “ghost” would be a noun. You see 
plainly, then, that “noun” means “name”, the name by 
which a person or thing is called. 

We have two kinds of nouns—big nouns and little nouns. 
Big nouns always begin with a capital letter. A person’s 
name is always a big noun. Grammars say the big nouns 
are proper nouns, but they don’t call little nouns “im¬ 
proper” nouns. They say that trees, fields, breezes, women, 
children, and all big classes of things or persons are com¬ 
mon nouns or “little nouns”. The only reason we need to 
know that there are two kinds of nouns is because we must 
begin one kind of noun with a capital letter, and the other 
with a little letter. How can we know a proper noun or 
capital noun or big noun? That is easy. It is a name that 
only one person or thing or a particular group of persons 
or things is supposed to have. If your name is Smith, 


Talks on Grammar 


11 


“Smith” is supposed to belong to you and to your particular 
group. It is then a proper noun or capital noun or big 
noun, and should always begin with a capital letter when 
it is written or printed. A capital letter is a big letter. 
We call my city “Macon”. ‘‘Macon” is the name given to 
this particular city; therefore, it should be written or 
printed with a capital letter at its beginning. 

THE ADJECTIVE 

When man becomes accustomed to the use of the noun, 
when he learns how to name a thing that he sees, he wants 
to describe it. He has seen the tree and he called it a 
“tree”. Its size impressed him. He said “big tree”. “Big” 
is then an adjective. Adjective means “thrown against” or 
“placed by the side of”. The adjective is nearly always 
placed by the side of the noun it describes. As the man 
learns more about trees, he may say “oak tree”. Then 
“oak” is the adjective. He may say “big oak tree”. Thus 
he used two adjectives. He may say “spreading tree”. 
“Spreading” would be an adjective. Several adjectives 
may be used to describe the same noun. He could say “big, 
spreading oak tree”. Here three adjectives would be used. 
Any word or group of words that describes a noun is an 
adjective. 

The little child's mind develops in grammar just as the 
grown man's did originally. The child asked for water. 


12 


Talks on Grammar 


Its knowledge increased and it said “fresh water”. “Fresh” 
is the adjective. It says “water cold”. “Cold” is the ad¬ 
jective. It says “more water”. “More” is the adjective. 
The child need not frame a sentence. He may whine out, 
“More water”, and all of us must understand that he means 
“Bring me some more water”—that if we don’t get more 
water for him, there’s going to be a squalling match. If 
he pushes away the glass, flutes his face and exclaims “Hot 
water”, we must know instantly that he means the water 
does not suit him. We move around in a hurry to stop the 
threatened row. He doesn’t need a complete sentence to 
make us understand. The noun and its descriptive word 
were sufficient. Eventually, however, more words are put 
into the sentence of the child. They don’t mean any more, 
but there are six more parts of speech, and sooner or later 
they will all be used. 

If you ask what is that? or, who is that? the answer is 
a noun. If you ask “what kind”, or “how many”, the 
answer is an adjective. You must look for the purpose of 
a word rather than its form to tell what part of speech it 
is. Any part of speech may be changed to some other part 
of speech by using it in a different sense. 

“Macon” is the name of a city; therefore, “Macon” is a 
noun when used as the name of a city; but if I speak of 
a “Macon bank”, “bank” is a noun and “Macon” is an ad¬ 
jective. If I ask “what kind” of bank, and you say a 


Talks on Grammar 


13 


“Macon bank”, “Macon” becomes an adjective, for it de¬ 
scribes the bank. If I say “bank business”, “business” is 
the noun and “bank” becomes an adjective. You can tell 
the part of speech by noticing the use that is made of the 
word. 

Our adjectives are very simple because they can be used 
in one form before any noun. We can say “the good boy”, 
and “good” describes one boy. We can say “the good boys”, 
and good will describe any or many boys. We can say “the 
good book” or “the good books”; “the good grandfather”, 
or the “good babe”. The adjective keeps its same form no 
matter what kind of noun you make it describe. This is 
not true in other languages, for their adjectives take on 
different forms to suit different kinds of nouns. “This” 
with its plural “these” is our only exception. “This” is 
used before a singular noun; “these”, before a plural noun. 
Wtele the word “adjective” means “thrown against” or 
“placed by the side of” the noun, yet it has become cus¬ 
tomary to let it sometimes get separated from the noun. 
For instance, “The book is good”, “The book is very good”. 
In such a sentence as “The book is very good”, you will see 
that “very” tells something about the adjective “good”. A 
word that affects or relates to an adjective is called an ad¬ 
verb, though the main duty of an adverb is to tell something 
about the verb. If I say “The book is exceedingly good”, 
“exceedingly” would be an adverb, modifying or affecting 


14 


Talks on Grammar 


“good”. If I say “The obedient child is happy”, “happy” 
is an adjective telling “what kind”. “Obedient” is an ad¬ 
jective telling what kind of a child is happy. If I say “A 
partially obedient child is moderately happy”, “partially” 
would be an adverb modifying “obedient”, and “moder¬ 
ately” would be an adverb modifying “happy”. “A run¬ 
ning horse is valuable” is a sentence with two adjectives. 
“Running” tells what kind of a horse, hence it is an ad¬ 
jective. “Valuable” is an adjective showing “what kind” 
of a horse. If I say “A madly running horse is hardly 
valuable”, “madly” is an adverb modifying “running”, and 
“hardly” is an adverb modifying “valuable”. Adverbs will 
be discussed later. 

Sometimes the adjective follows its noun, though this is 
not the rule. “The old folks acted as children happy and 
free.” “Joy unconfined is ours.” “Books plain and simple 
are sold there.” Some nouns are never preceded by an ad¬ 
jective, but may be followed by it, as “something delicious”, 
“nothing bad”, “anything objectionable”. 

Sometimes an adjective is used with a noun to indicate 
a group or class, as “an old man” or “old men”. If we say 
“poor old men”, we have two adjectives, but we don’t put 
a comma between them, because they are used differently. 
One is to indicate a large class or group and the “poor” is 
meant to tell “what kind” of “old men”, and not merely 
what kind of men. “Old” tells what kind of “men” and 


Talks on Grammar 


15 


“poor” tells “what kind” of “old men”. “Unfortunate bad 
boys” would be a similar case. “Unfortunate” is an adjec¬ 
tive describing “bad boys”, not “boys”. If the two adjec¬ 
tives were the same kind, a comma would be placed between 
them, as, “Unfortunate, miserable boys”; “Sad, unlucky 
boys”. “Swarming blue birds” would not take a comma, 
because we recognize the blue birds as a group or class of 
birds. If we say “a fat, beautiful horse”, a comma would 
be used, because each adjective is meant to describe “horse” 
in the same way, each to tell of his condition; but when I 
say “a fat saddle horse”, I mean to describe “a saddle 
horse”, and not merely a horse. As “saddle horses” are 
recognized as a class of horses, no comma would be used 
after “fat”. If you can properly put “and” between adjec¬ 
tives used this way, a comma is required when the “and” 
is not used. If you can put “and” between two adjectives, 
a comma could be used in place of “and”. “Sad and unlucky 
boys” would be the same as “Sacf, unlucky boys”. 

THE PRONOUN 

There is one more part of speech that deals with or be¬ 
longs to the noun. It is a pronoun. The word means to 
“stand for the noun”, or “to be used instead of the noun”. 
The pronoun was invented or created to take the place of 
the noun when it is awkward to use the noun often. If I 
say “Baby cries for baby’s food every time baby gets hun- 


16 


Talks on Grammar 


gry”, you would see that I have used the word “baby” too 
often. I must find some word to stand for “baby”, after I 
have used “baby” once in such a short sentence. So I put 
“it” in place of “baby”. Then my sentence runs, “Baby 
cries for its food every time it gets hungry”. Here my 
sentence is just as easily understood, and the “it” is called 
a pronoun because it stood for the noun. Be sure always 
that the reader or your hearer knows what noun your pro¬ 
noun stands for. Don’t use the same pronoun to stand for 
different nouns in the same sentence. 

Pronouns change form. We use one pronoun to stand 
for the name of a man and a different one to stand 
for the name of a woman. Man is masculine. The pro¬ 
noun to stand for a masculine noun is “he”. Woman is 
feminine. The pronoun to stand for a feminine name is 
“she”. We speak of masculine gender and of feminine gen¬ 
der. Boy is masculine gender; girl is feminine gender. If 
we speak of a baby, not knowing whether the baby is a boy 
or girl, we use the pronoun “it” to stand for the noun. “The 
baby knows when it wants water.” If we are using a pro¬ 
noun to stand for the name of a thing, we use “it”. “It” 
is said to be of neuter gender. “Tree” is supposed to have 
no gender. “Tree” is, therefore, said to be of neuter gen¬ 
der. “Garden” is neuter gender. “Train” is neuter. “The 
garden pays good return for the work done in it.” “The 
tree fell and smashed its limbs.” When gender cannot be 


Talks on Grammar 


17 


known, “it” is the pronoun used. That’s why we can let 
“it” stand for “baby”. “It” is the pronoun for neuter gen¬ 
der and for uncertain gender. 

Notice how pronouns change their form. If a pronoun 
is to stand for a noun that means more than one, it is said 
to be plural, and takes a plural form. “Man knows when 
he is well”; “Men know when they are well.” “Woman 
knows when she is in love”; “Women know when they are 
in love.” “The tree does not know when it is about to 
fall”; “Trees don’t know when they are about to fall.” We 
notice that the plural of “he” is “they”; the plural of “she” 
is “they”; the plural of “he” is “they”. The masculine “he”, 
the feminine “she” and the neuter “it” all have the same 
plural, which is “they”. 

These pronouns have what we call possessive forms. The 
possessive form of “he” is “his”; the possessive form of 
“she” is “her” or “hers”; the possessive form of “it” is 
“its”; the possessive form of “they” is “their” or “theirs”. 

There is this difference between the way we make the 
possessive form of the noun and the possessive form of the 
pronoun: An apostrophe and “s” are added to form the 
possessive of a noun; the apostrophe is never used to show 
the possessive form of a pronoun. An apostrophe means 
something “cut out or left out”, as “don’t” means “do not”; 
“can’t” means “cannot”. Why this sign came to be used to 
show the possessive of nouns may be explained quite inter- 


18 


Talks on Grammar 


estingly in another lecture. “Man’s work influences his char¬ 
acter.” Here the apostrophe and “s” are added to “man” 
to show that man possesses work; no apostrophe is seen in 
the “his” which we use before “character”. You will notice 
that the apostrophe and “s” are added to plural nouns just 
as they are to nouns that are singular, or that mean “but 
one”. “The boy’s height is too great for his weight.” “Boy” 
is made possessive by adding the apostrophe and “s”. 
“Boys’s clothes should show style.” “Boys’s” would be hard 
to pronounce, because there is too much hissing sound at 
the end. We must change it in some way so as to pronounce 
it easily. “Horses’s manes may be made as beautiful as 
their tails.” “Horses’s”, we note, is also hard to pronounce. 
“Girls’s hats are more for style than service.” We don’t 
say “girls’s” very easily, so we make a rule that we add 
only the apostrophe to form the possessive of words that 
end in “s”. The rule simplified, would read: 

“Put an apostrophe and ‘s’ after all nouns that don’t end 
in ‘s’. Put only an apostrophe after nouns that end in ‘s’.” 

You will find that some people are writing the apostrophe 
and “s” after a few nouns that end in “s”, but the objection 
to the hissing sound has caused all late writers to drop that 
plan and use only an apostrophe to form the possessive of 
nouns ending in sound of “s”. This rule will get rid of all 
exceptions. The word “horses” ends in “s”; form the pos¬ 
sessive by adding only an apostrophe. The word “horse” 


Talks on Grammar 


19 


does not end in “s”; so form its possessive by using apos¬ 
trophe and “s”. The word “girls” does end in “s”; there¬ 
fore, we add only the apostrophe. “The witness’ testimony 
was strong.” We add only the apostrophe to “witness” 
because “witness” ends in “s”. Some grammarians, who 
follow older styles of literature, want an apostrophe and 
“s” added to words like “witness”; and so do some later 
grammarians, who copied what the earlier ones had to say 
about it; but the “s” in addition to the apostrophe makes 
the objectionable hissing sound. Only the apostrophe is 
needed. 

Another form of the pronoun is when it is used as an 
“object”. It is then said to be the objective case. “He” be¬ 
comes “him”; “she” becomes “her”; “they” becomes 
“them”. “It” does not change in the objective. “John 
asked her to give the book to him.” “Susan asked the boys 
to let her give them some books.” “John wanted a book, 
and I gave it to him.” 

In addition to the above pronouns, which are said to be 
in the “third person” or “standing for a person or thing 
spoken about”, we have pronouns in the first person and 
others in the second person. When I speak of “myself”, 
the pronoun used is in the first person. When we speak 
of “ourselves”, the pronoun is in the first person. “I” is a 
pronoun in the first person. “We” is a pronoun in the first 
person. In the possessive, “I” becomes “my” or “mine”. 


20 


Talks on Grammar 


“I want my book sent to me.” “Give me my book.” “John 
hurt me.” The possessive of “we” becomes “our” or “ours” 
and the objective case of “we” becomes “us”. “We want 
our books sent to us.” “Give us our books.” “John hurt 
us.” “Many blessings are ours.” 

If anyone speaks to you, he uses the pronoun of the second 
person. “You” is the pronoun of the second person. The 
possessive form is “your”. The objective case of “you” does 
not change. “You want your books sent to you.” “John 
hurt you.” “That book is yours.” We note the possessive 
pronoun comes before a noun like an adjective, except when 
the extra form is used. “Our books are here.” The “our” 
comes before “books” like an adjective. “Those books are 
ours.” The “ours” is the extra form, and a noun never 
comes after it. “This is my book.” The “my” comes before 
“book”, like an adjective. “That book is mine.” The 
“mine” is the extra form and is never followed by a noun. 
‘•'That is your book.” The “your” is used before the noun 
just as an adjective would be. “That book is yours.” The 
“yours” is an extra form and no noun follows it. “That is 
her book.” “Her” goes before the noun like an adjective. 
“That book is hers.” The “hers” is the extra form and will 
not be followed by a noun. “These are their books.” “Their” 
is the possessive pronoun that goes before a noun as an ad¬ 
jective would. “These books are theirs.” The “theirs” is 
the extra form and will not take a noun after it. When an 


Talks on Grammar 


21 


adjective modifies a pronoun, the pronoun comes first: 
‘‘John saw him living”; “I never saw you angry.” “One”, 
“another”, “either”, “neither” are called indefinite pronouns 
or pronominals. They form the possessive by using the 
apostrophe. “The interest taken in work determines one’s 
character.” “This is another’s job.” Such pronouns as 
“this”, “those”, “whatever”, and the like, are indefinite be¬ 
cause the nouns for which they stand are not in evidence. 
We must always know that “his book” means some definite 
or particular person’s book, but when we say “another’s 
book”, it is indefinite or uncertain as to whose book it is. 
“Self” may be added to a personal pronoun to make it in¬ 
tensive or to emphasize: “Myself” or “ourselves”. These 
are not used instead of the simple personal pronouns, except 
in the objective case. I cannot say, “myself did the work”, 
but I can say, “I did the work myself”, or “I myself did the 
work.” “She told me so herself.” “He lost it himself.” In 
these sentences the “self” pronoun emphasizes the simple 
pronoun. When I wish to use the “self pronoun” as the 
object of a sentence, I must say, “John hurt himself.” If 
we said, “John hurt him”, the “him” would mean someone 
else, not John; but when I say, “John hurt himself”, you 
understand clearly who was hurt by John. “Mary admires 
herself.” Who is it that Mary admires? You can plainly 
see that she admires herself, and those who admire them¬ 
selves don’t generally admire others. If I said, “Mary ad- 


22 


Talks on Grammar 


mires her”, the “her” would be understood by everybody to 
mean that Mary admires another lady. 

“We are fond of ourselves.” The meaning would not be 
misunderstood if we changed the objective pronoun, so as to 
make it read, “We are fond of us”, but the sentence would 
be unusual and unheard of. We must say, “We are fond of 
ourselves.” We see, therefore, that in such instances the 
“self pronoun” must be used instead of the simple pronoun 
in the objective case, but not elsewhere. 

“Who”, “which”, “what”, “that”, “this” are also called 
pronouns, because they can “stand for” nouns, but with one 
exception they don’t change forms like the personal pro¬ 
nouns. “Who” is nominative, “whose” is possessive, “whom” 
is objective, but the others are the same in all cases. So 
“who” is the only one of these that changes form like the 
personal pronouns. 


THE VERB 

Now we reach the fourth part of speech, the verb. “Verb” 
means “word”, “the word”; that is, it is the essential word. 
You can’t make a real sentence without a verb. We can 
have a noun, an adjective and pronoun, but they mean 
nothing without a verb. “It good bread” might have a 
meaning if we understood that “is” was to be placed after 
“it”, but without the “is” we realize that we have no sen¬ 
tence. The verb in a sentence is called the predicate. “Pred- 


Talks on Grammar 


23 


icate” is that on which the idea depends. The idea cannot 
be expressed without the predicate. We can make a perfect 
sentence with nothing but the noun and verb: “Children 
laugh.” “Children” is the noun and “laugh” is the verb. 
“Children” will be the subject and “laugh” the predicate. 
We are telling something about children. That which the 
predicate tells about is the subject. We may have the sub¬ 
ject of a long article, the subject of a book, the subject of a 
sentence. That which we talk about or write about is our 
subject. In grammar, if action is against our subject, the 
subject becomes an object. We talked about “children” in 
the sentence, “Children laugh”. “Children” was the sub¬ 
ject, but if we say “The Bible tells us to whip children”, 
children will be the object of “whip”, and yet we are talking 
about “children”. 

Some verbs express action, others merely show a state of 
being. “Laugh” shows action. But if we say “Children 
seem happy”, the “seem” is a verb which shows a state of 
being. “Children are happy.” The “are” shows a state of 
being. Keep these two kinds of verbs in mind, because it is 
very important. When we take up the adverb, we will see 
that verbs of action are qualified by adverbs, while verbs 
denoting state of being or mere existence use adjectives in¬ 
stead of adverbs. More errors are made in English by con¬ 
fusion in these two classes of verbs than from any other 
cause. Adjectives usually add “ly” to make an adverb. 


24 


Talks on Grammar 


People who understand that verbs of being don't take ad¬ 
verbs would never say “I feel badly” or “He looks badly”. 
They would say “I feel bad” or “He looks bad”. They don't 
say “They seem sadly” or “They are miserably”. The cor¬ 
rect way is, “They are miserable”, “They are sad”. If they 
can “feel badly”, they can “be miserably”, which nobody 
says. The verbs that denote looks or feelings are verbs of 
being, not of action. “Is”, “are”, “will be”, “have”, “have 
been”, “was”, “were”, “had”, “has” are verbs of being. We 
cannot say “we are happily”, “we are sadly”, “we are 
gladly”; nor can we say “we feel badly”, “we feel gladly”, 
“we feel happily”; nor can we say “we look happily”, “we 
look badly”, “we look gladly”. The reason is that all of 
these are verbs of being, and verbs of being are not modi 
fied by adverbs. “The water seems cold”, not “coldly”; 
“The food seems hot”, not “hotly”; “The snow looks white”, 
not “whitely”; “The plate looks clean”, not “cleanly”; “The 
glass feels smooth”, not “smoothly”. 

Verbs of action are modified by adverbs, as will be shown 
when we reach the lecture on adverbs. 

Verbs change their forms in different uses. The verb 
“run” changes to “runs” if the subject is singular number. 
It is strange that we add “s” to form the plural of a noun 
and do the opposite to form a plural verb. We take off the 
“s” from the end of verbs to show that they are plural. 
“The boys run.” “The boy runs.” 


Talks on Grammar 


25 


When the subject is singular number, or only one, the 
verb adds an “s”; when the subject is plural, or means more 
than one, the predicate or verb leaves off the “s”. “Boys” 
is a plural noun. Plural nouns take verbs without the 
added “s”. When “boys” is used as the subject of a verb, 
the verb will not take an “s”. “Boys run.” Singular nouns 
take verbs with “s” added. “Boy” is singular. When “boy” 
is used as the subject of a verb, the verb will add an “s”. 
“The boy runs”, “The boy laughs”, “The boy skips”, “The 
boy works”. 

Verbs change the same way for any nouns. “Man 
works”, “Men work”, “The child eats”, “Children eat.” We 
notice that when the subject is singular, the verb adds the 
“s”, and when the subject is plural the verb does not add an 
“s”. If two singular nouns are joined together by “and”, 
they make a plural subject, and the verb leaves off the “s” 
just as when one noun is used in the plural for a subject: 
“John and Jim run”. “John runs”, “Jim runs”, but when 
you mention John and Jim together as the subject, we say 
“John and Jim run”, leaving off the “s”. If the word be¬ 
tween John and Jim is “or” instead of “and”, it makes a 
singular subject, and then, of course, the verb adds the “s”, 
as “John or Jim runs”. This means “John runs” or “Jim 
runs”. 

Verbs also change their form to indicate “time when”. If 
we say “John runs”, we mean that he runs now. If we say 


26 


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“John will run”, we mean that he will run at some future 
time. If we say “John ran”, we mean that he did his run¬ 
ning at a time that is past. We have only three kinds of 
time: that which has passed, that which is now and that 
which is to come. We say that the time which has gone is 
“past time”, that which is now is “present time”, and that 
which is to come is “future time”. Most verbs add “ed” to 
show past time. These are called regular verbs, because 
they all change their form in the same way to indicate time. 
Verbs like “run”, “see” and about thirty others commonly 
used, are irregular because there is no rule by which we can 
know how they show past time. We are forced to memorize 
each of them separately, as,“John runs”, “John ran”; “John 
takes things”, “John took things”, “John saw things”. 

Past-time forms like these show that we are trying to tell 
of something that occurred in a more or less definite past. 
We don’t always say just when it occurred, yet we can do 
so when we use such forms. We can mention the exact time 
in connection with these forms, as “John took the things 
yesterday at 12 o’clock”, “John saw the things last week on 
Saturday”. These predicates are all made with one word 
as the verb. There are other forms for the past tense which 
only indicate indefinite time. They require two or more 
words to make the predicate: “John ‘has seen’ things.” 
Here you can’t say when he saw them. One-word verbs 
show definite past; two-word verbs show indefinite past. 


Talks on Grammar 


27 


“John has taken things.” Here the time is indefinite and 
cannot be stated. Yon would quickly object to my English 
if I said “John has taken the things yesterday.” You would 
insist that I should say, “John took the things yesterday”, 
and you would be right about it, for “has”, “was”, “had” 
and other past-time auxiliaries are used only when the time 
is not to be stated or could not be stated with definiteness. 
An auxiliary is a little verb used before another verb to 
aid it. 

When we express future time, we use the present time 
form of our verb and put the auxiliary “will” or “shall” or 
“can” or “must” or “may” before it: “John will see things”, 
“John will take the things”, “John may run”, “John will 
run.” We notice that the “s” is never added for these future 
time forms of the verb, no matter whether the subject is 
singular or plural. In other words, the past time forms 
and the future time forms of the verb are the same for the 
singular noun as for the plural noun: “The man will take 
things”, “The men will take things”, “The man saw things”, 
“The men will see things”. 

The regular verbs have the same form for indefinite past 
time as for definite past time. The irregular verbs, much 
to our annoyance, have different forms for the definite and 
the indefinite. “Run” is an irregular verb, because its past 
time form is not made by adding “ed”. Its form for definite 
past would be “ran”; its form for the indefinite past would 


28 


Talks on Grammar 


be “has run”. “See” is irregular. Its form for the definite 
past is “saw”; its form for the indefinite past is “has seen”. 
Most of the irregular verbs vary their forms this way, but 
the regular verbs are much simpler. They work as follows: 
“I loved.” This is definite. “I have loved.” This is in¬ 
definite. “I played”, definite; “I have played”, indefinite 
past. 

We noted in another paragraph that the form of the 
verb itself is the same for plural subjects as for singular 
subjects when we express past time and future time. Now 
let us observe that the auxiliary changes with the subject 
when we express past time, but does not when we express 
future time. 

Past time: “Man has seen”, “Men have seen”. “Has” is 
the auxiliary for the singular subject, but it changes to 
“have” when the subject becomes plural. “The boy has 
seen”, “The boys have seen”. 

In future time, the auxiliary and its verb keep the form 
no matter what the subject is: “The boy may see”, “The 
boys may see”, “The boy will see”, “The man will take”, 
“The men will take”. 

“Had” and “did” are past-time auxiliaries that never 
change form: “The boy had seen”, “The boys did see”. 


Talks on Grammar 


29 


PRONOUNS WITH VERBS 

The pronoun “I” requires “am” as a special form of verb 
for its predicate. “Am” is never used except as the predi¬ 
cate or as the predicate auxiliary after “I”: “I am”, “I am 
working”, “I am studying”, “I am killing time”. These 
sentences denote present time. If we use a noun instead of 
a pronoun for the subject, we would say, “John is”, “John 
is working”, “John is studying”, “John is killing time”. If 
we use a plural noun for the subject, the auxiliary changes 
its form: “Men are”, “Men are working”, “Men are study¬ 
ing”, “Men are killing time”. Notice that these forms show 
the changes for the present time. 

For past time the pronoun “I” uses the same form of 
auxiliary as a plural noun uses: “I have worked”, “Men 
have worked”, “I have studied”, “Men have studied”, “I 
have killed my time”, “Men have killed their time”. 

The same verb forms are used after pronouns as after 
nouns when the future time is expressed: “I will work”, “A 
man will work”, “Men will work”; “I may work”, “A man 
may work”, “Men may work”; “I shall work”, “A man shall 
work”, “Men shall work”. 

The pronoun “you” always takes the same form of verb 
as a plural noun, no matter whether the verb expresses 
past, present or future time: “Men have played”, “You have 
played”, “Men sang”, “You sang”, “Boys have sung”, “You 


30 


Talks on Grammar 


have sung”, “Children sing”, “You sing”, “Children will 
sing”, “You will sing”. 

“He”, “she” and “it”, the pronouns of the third person, 
take the same form of verb as singular nouns: “He 
laughs”, “She laughs”, “It laughs”, “Baby laughs”, “He is 
laughing”, “She is laughing”, “It is laughing’,’ “Cicero is 
laughing”; “He has laughed”, “Cicero has laughed”; “She 
will laugh”, “Cicero will laugh”. 

All plural pronouns take the same form of verb as plural 
nouns: “We are hoping”, “Men are hoping”, “You are hop¬ 
ing”, “They are hoping”, “Men hope”, “We hope”, “You 
hope”, “They hope”. 

Thus you will see that “I” is the only pronoun that takes 
the special form of verb “am.” Except where “am” and 
“was” are used after “I”, the “I” takes the same form of 
verb as a plural noun: “I have worked”, “Men have 
worked”. 

The pronoun “you” takes the same form of verb as a 
plural noun, and all plural pronouns take the same form of 
verb as plural nouns. All of the personal pronouns except 
“he,” “she” or “it” take the same form of verb as plural 
nouns, and also except when “am” and “are” work with the 
pronoun “I”. 

“Don’t” is a contraction of “do not”. No person proud 
of his language will say “It don’t”, “She don’t”, “He don’t”. 


Talks on Grammar 


31 


These are equivalent to “It do not”, “She do not”, “He do 
not”. 

Let us further simplify the rule by saying that “he”, 
“she” and “it” are the only personal pronouns that take the 
same form of verb as the singular noun. “He was”, “John 
was”, “He runs”, “John runs”. Other personal pronouns 
take the same form of verb as the plural nouns: “I run”, 
“You run”, “We run”, “They run”. “I” classes with the 
plural nouns except when used in connection with “was” or 
“am”: “I ran”, “Men ran”, “I have seen”, “I am seen”, 
“Men have seen”. 


ADVERBS 

Adverbs are what the word implies: They are words 
added to verbs, to strengthen or weaken the verbs: “John 
runs swiftly.” “Swiftly” is the adverb. It tells “how” 
John runs. Words denoting “how”, “when”, “where”, 
“why”, “how much” are adverbs. If I say “John runs 
swiftly”, the “swiftly” tells “how” John runs; therefore, 
it is an adverb denoting “how”. If I say “John ran yester¬ 
day”, the “yesterday” is the adverb denoting “when”. If I 
say “John ran a year ago”, “a year ago” is the adverb de¬ 
noting time. You see that one word or a group of words 
may serve as an adverb. When a group of words is re¬ 
quired, we call the group an adverb-phrase. 

“Where did John run? He ran here.” “Here” is an ad- 


32 


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verb. “He ran on the street.” “On the street” is the adverb- 
phrase. “He ran there.” “There” is the adverb, showing 
“where”. 

“Why did John run? Because he likes running.” “John 
ran because he likes running.” The group of words showing 
“why” makes another sentence. For our purposes, we can 
say that a word or group of words that answer “why” is an 
adverb. If we say “John runs” “for the reason that he 
likes running”, the adverb will consist of the group of 
words “for the reason that he likes running”. This may 
be called for our purposes an adverb-phrase. “How much 
does John run?” “Too much.” This is an adverb. “He 
runs little.” “Little” is the adverb showing “how much”. 
“John runs often.” “Often” is the adverb showing “how 
much” or “when”. “John runs excessively.” “Excessively” 
is the adverb. You will notice that there is very little dif¬ 
ference between the adverbs denoting “how” and those de¬ 
noting “how much”. It does not make much difference if 
one class is mistaken for the other. “John runs more than 
I do.” The adverb-phrase is “more than I do”, and it de¬ 
notes “how much”. 

The usual way to form an adverb is to add “ly” to an 
adjective. “Mary is charming.” Here “charming” is an 
adjective telling what kind of a person Mary is. “Mary 
talks charmingly.” “Charmingly” shows “how” Mary talks. 
A word showing “how”, “when”, “where”, “why” a thing is 


Talks on Grammar 


33 


\ 


done is an adverb. The adverb “charmingly” was formed 
by adding “ly” to the adjective “charming”. This is often 
done; but we must not conclude that all words ending in 
“ly” are adverbs. Some of them are adjectives. Confusion 
is often caused by memorizing a list of words as a certain 
part of speech. A word is an adjective only when it does 
the service of an adjective. An adverb is an adverb only 
when it does an adverb’s work. We can take any word and 
make it more than one part of speech. A verb will become 
a noun if you use it to do a noun’s work in the sentence. 
We use “is” as a verb, but when I say “when we use ‘is’ as 
a verb”, the “is” is a noun, because it is the name of a word. 
When I say “ ‘Is’ is a verb”, the first “is” is a noun, while 
the second “is” is a verb. The first “is” is the subject of 
the second “is”, because it is the name of the word I am 
discussing. 

“Mary is a lovely girl.” “Lovely is an adjective because 
it tells “what kind” of a girl Mary is; yet it ends in “ly” 
like an adverb. “Mary is a loving daughter.” “Loving” is 
an adjective because it tells “what kind” of a daughter 
Mary is. “The man is poorly.” Poorly is here an adjec¬ 
tive, describing man; but “poorly” becomes an adverb when 
I say “The man works poorly.” 

“Mary talks lovingly to her mother.” Here “lovingly” is 
the adverb made by adding “ly” to the adjective “loving”. 
We needed an adverb to tell “how” Mary talked to her 


34 


Talks on Grammar 


mother. We made it by thus slightly changing the form of 
the adjective, though in “poorly” the same form was used 
for the adjective as for the adverb. 

Other words have the same form when used as an adjec¬ 
tive as when used as an adverb. “John is a well man.” 
“Well” in this sentence is an adjective telling “what kind” 
of man John is. “John runs well.” In this sentence “well” 
is an adverb, telling “how” John runs. “John looks well” 
means John looks as if he is well, and the “well” is an ad¬ 
jective telling “what kind” of condition he is in or “what 
his state of being is”. “Looks” in this sentence does not 
imply or show any action on John’s part, therefore the word 
indicating “what kind” of appearance he has is an adjec¬ 
tive. If we say, “John sees well”, the “well” would be an 
adverb, showing “how” he sees. “See” is a verb denoting 
action; and a word showing “how” an act was performed 
is always an adverb. 

The most important reason for you to learn about adverbs 
is to keep from confusing them with adjectives. You can’t 
learn by hearing people talk, because very few know well 
enough to keep from making mistakes when they talk. I 
have told you that verbs of being, or verbs showing merely 
a state of existence or appearance or state of feeling, are 
followed by adjectives and not by adverbs. I hope to im¬ 
press on your mind the importance of learning this. You 
will hear from people professing education such inconsist- 


Talks on Grammar 


35 


encies as: “I feel good”, which is correct; or, “I feel badly”, 
which is wrong. “Badly” is an adverb, formed by adding 
“ly” to the adjective “bad”. If you feel good, you will feel 
the opposite of “good” when you don’t feel “good”. The 
opposite of “good” is “bad”. “Good” is an adjective, so is 
“bad”. If you feel “good” when you are well, you will feel 
“bad” when you are not well. 

You say “Miss Nancy looks good”, “Miss Nancy looks 
fine”, “Miss Nancy looks elegant”. These are correct. The 
words describing “Miss Nancy” are adjectives. If you sajd 
the opposite about her appearance, you would use opposite 
adjectives, not adverbs. The verbs in these sentences indi¬ 
cate no action or effort on the part of the subject. Verbs 
of action or effort are modified or affected by adverbs, but 
verbs of mere appearance, feeling or state of existence are 
not modified by adverbs. 

Of course, the adverb or adjective is unchanged, whether 
the verb is used in present time, past time or future time. 
“If I feel bad”, “I felt bad” or “I have felt bad”; or if I 
eat imprudently, “I will feel bad”. “I have eaten impru¬ 
dently” in the past, or “I ate imprudently”; “I will eat im¬ 
prudently again”. 

Adverbs may modify adverbs as well as verbs. “I eat 
very imprudently.” The “very” is an adverb telling “how 
imprudently” I eat. Any word that affects the adverb is an 
adverb. If I say, “I ate less imprudently than you”, the 


36 


Talks on Grammar 


words “less than you” tell “how imprudently” I ate; there¬ 
fore they make an adverb-phrase. If I say “I ate too im¬ 
prudently”, the “too” is an adverb modifying “imprudently”. 
If I say, “I ate entirely too imprudently”, the “entirely too” 
tell “how imprudently”, and are, therefore, adverbs modify¬ 
ing “imprudently”. 

Adverbs may also modify adjectives, by showing “how 
much” or “how little”. Such adverbs are usually adverbs 
of degree: “He is a good man.” “Good” is the adjective 
showing “what kind” of man. “He is a very good man.” 
“Very” is an adverb showing “how good”, or the degree. 
“Bob is moderately good.” “Moderately” is an adverb show¬ 
ing the degree of the adjective “good”. 

We see that adverbs may modify verbs, adjectives and 
other adverbs. Some rules include participles as being 
modified by adverbs, but a participle is a myth. It is noth¬ 
ing unless it is a noun, or a verb, or an adjective. Don't 
bother with it. 

Some grammarians say that nouns and pronouns may be 
modified by adverbs. This is not entirely true. They say 
that when we use the sentence “Almost anybody can learn 
if he will study”, the “almost” is an adverb modifying “any¬ 
body”. This is true, but you will notice that anybody is a 
word made of two words—“any” and “body”. Suppose 
we say “any person”, would not the meaning be the same 
as if we say “any body”? What part of speech is “any” 


Talks on Grammar 


37 


when used as a separate word before “body”? It is clearly 
an adjective, just as “some” is. We say “somebody”, “some¬ 
one”, etc. If we use an adverb before a word consisting 
of an adjective and noun, the adverb modifies the adjective 
part of the word, not the noun part. “Almost anyone can 
learn”, “Almost anybody can learn”, “Almost any person 
can learn.” In each sentence you can see an illustration 
of the point. Adverbs do not modify nouns. 

There are other instances that are very misleading. 
Here is one: “Who spilled this ink?” “Not I.” “Not” is 
a negative adverb, but the sentence in which it appears is 
imperfect. We must have a subject and predicate to make 
a sentence. If we supply the missing words, we will see 
that the answer expressed perfectly would be: “I did not 
spill this ink.” That makes the “not” modify the verb 
“did spill”. 

Let’s change the proposition: “Did you spill this ink?” 
The answer is “yes”. The one word “yes” and the answer 
“not I” just discussed are like the first sentence the baby 
used when we started the subject of grammar. He said, 
“Ma”. He made no sentence, and without imagining what 
he meant to say, we could get nothing out of his word. 
So it is with the “not I” or the “yes”. The answer “yes” 
means “I did spill this ink”, or it may mean: “I answer 
affirmatively”, which shows why “yes” is said by gram¬ 
marians to be an adverb. It is equivalent to saying: “I 


38 


Talks on Grammar 


answer you affirmatively.” We might call such words, 
used in such a contracted or condensed way, “adverbial 
particles”. 

When you want to learn the part of speech that discon¬ 
nected words are or may be, consult a big dictionary. 

PREPOSITIONS 

A preposition means “placed before”. It is usually a 
small word placed before a noun or pronoun. “Give the 
book to John.” In such a sentence, who is the subject of 
“give”? It is “you”, but “you” is understood. I am talking 
to “you”. The sentence is equivalent to saying: “You give 
the book to John.” “Book” is the object of the “give”. “To” 
is the preposition, placed before John. “John” is the indi¬ 
rect object. The person or thing toward which an act is 
directed is said to be the indirect object. “John gave the 
book to me.” Here “John” is the subject of “gave”. “Book” 
is the object; “me” is the indirect object. An indirect ob¬ 
ject is frequently shown by a preposition placed before it. 
“I threw the ball at you.” The ball was thrown. “Ball” is 
the object; “you”, the indirect object. Sometimes the indi¬ 
rect object has the preposition understood instead of ex¬ 
pressed: “Tom gave John the book.” You can see that Tom 
did not give “John”, he gave “the book”; he gave the book 
to John. 

“He gave me the book.” “Me” is the indirect object. 


Talks on Grammar 


39 


“Book” is the direct object. You will note that “to me” is 
really meant, for “he did not give me”; he gave “the book” 
to me. The indirect object of a verb of action has a prepo¬ 
sition before it, though the preposition is often merely 
understood. 

Prepositions are numerous and they play a part in a 
great many phrases, but for our purposes we need consider 
only those that are placed before pronouns. The pronouns 
must always be in the objective case after a preposition, 
though great numbers of people make the mistake of using 
pronouns in the nominative case after a preposition. If 
we say, “We swim in a lake”, we can call “in a lake” an ad- 
verb-phrase, because it shows where we swim. “We spent 
last summer in the mountains.” “In the mountains” would 
be an adverb-phrase showing “where” we spent the sum¬ 
mer. The preposition does not change the form of nouns, 
as you will see; but it does demand a particular form of 
pronoun. “We boys work hard” is a correct sentence; but 
we cannot say “Some of we boys work hard”. “Of” is a 
preposition, and the “we” that follows it in this sentence 
is in the nominative case, which is wrong. The word fol¬ 
lowing a preposition must always be in the objective case. 
The objective case of the pronoun “we” is “us.” Then we 
must say, “Some of ‘us’ boys work hard”. 

If you learn how to use the objective case of the pro¬ 
nouns in connection with the preposition, you will have no 


40 


Talks on Grammar 


further need to study the preposition as a separate part of 
speech. It will not change the form of any other word. 
“Between” is the preposition and “us” is the pronoun in 
the objective case. “You sent the cake to me.” “To” is the 
preposition, “me” is the pronoun in the objective case. “You 
sent the cake for me.” “For” is the preposition, “me” is 
the pronoun in the objective case. “You sent the cake for 
him.” “Him” is the pronoun in the objective case after the 
preposition “for”. 

A common and most noticeable error is made when people 
get one of the pronouns in the nominative and another in 
the objective case after a preposition. “You sent the cake 
for him and I.” This is a serious error. Nobody would say 
“You sent the cake for I.” “I” is the nominative form. 

We must have the objective form after the preposition. 
“You sent the cake for him.” “You sent the cake for me.” 
Make both sentences into one and it would read, “You sent 
the cake for him and me.” 

When you are in doubt about how to use a sentence of 
this kind, leave out one of the pronouns; frame the sen¬ 
tence with the other pronoun, then frame the sentence with 
both pronouns in the same form as when you used them 
separately. “You sent the cake for him.” “You sent the 
cake for me.” Now use both pronouns in the same sen¬ 
tence with the same form as when they were used sep¬ 
arately, and you have: “You sent the cake for him and me.” 


Talks on Grammar 


41 


Another way to determine the correct form of the pro¬ 
nouns when two or more occur after a preposition in a sen¬ 
tence, is to repeat the preposition before each pronoun: 
“You sent the cake for him and for me.” This is helpful, 
because nobody feels inclined to say, “You sent the cake for 
he”, nor would anyone be likely to say, “You sent the 
cake for I.” Anybody who has heard correct language 
knows that we should say “You sent the cake for him”, or, 
“You sent the cake for me”; therefore, “You sent the cake 
for him and for me”, or, “You sent the cake for him and 
me”. 

“The cake was divided between John and us.” “Between” 
is the preposition, and the pronoun “us” is in the objective 
case, which is correct. 

Wherever a preposition is used, every pronoun that is its 
object must have the objective form, no matter how many 
pronouns are used. The pronouns “you” and “it” have the 
same form in the objective case as they have in the nomi¬ 
native, but all of the others have a different form when 
used in the objective case. “Them” is the objective form 
for the pronoun “they”. “He was the greatest man among 
they” would be wrong, because “among” is a preposition 
and must be followed by the objective form. We must say, 
“He was the greatest man among them”. 

In what has been said above, reference was made to only 
personal pronouns, but there are two other sets of pro- 


42 


Talks on Grammar 


nouns. They are “who”, “which”, “that”, “this”. Any word 
which may be substituted for a noun to save repetition of 
the noun too often in a sentence is a pronoun. “This”, 
“which”, “that”—all but “who”—may be used as adjectives, 
but when they take the place of nouns, they are pronouns. 
We said in a previous lecture that adjectives had but one 
form. “This” and “that” are exceptions; they have a sin¬ 
gular and plural form. The plural form of “this” is “these”: 
“These men.” Here “these” is an adjective describing 
“men”. “That man”, “Those men”. “That” describes 
“man”, “those” describes “men”. 

“Who” is a pronoun that changes its form after a prep¬ 
osition, or when it is the object of a verb. “Who” becomes 
“whom”. “To whom did you give this money?” “Whom” 
is the object of the preposition “to”. “It makes no differ¬ 
ence for whom you work, because if you work faithfully, 
you are working for yourself; if you work slothfully, you 
are working for the Prince of Evil.” 

CONJUNCTIONS 

The conjunction is the sixth part of speech. It is very 
simple, and can be disposed of briefly. The conjunction 
joins or disjoins. “You and I like to study.” The “and” 
is a conjunction. It joins the two pronouns in the subject. 
“You or I must go.” The “or” is a conjunction, but it dis¬ 
connects. Grammarians call it a disjunctive conjunction. 


Talks on Grammar 


43 


“John and Jim gamble.” “John and Jim” are joined to¬ 
gether by the conjunction and both are made the subject of 
“gamble”; but if I say “John or Jim gambles”, I mean that 
one of them does, but not both of them. Any word that 
connects words or groups of words is a conjunction. Some¬ 
times the conjunction leads the reader back to something 
previously said or written, as, “Therefore, children should 
not be spoiled.” “Therefore” makes you understand that 
something has previously been said to make you know that 
children should not be spoiled. Many words that are ordi¬ 
narily supposed to be adverbs or other parts of speech are 
conjunctions. Conjunctions connect; therefore, we might 
say that conjunctions are connectives; that is, they connect 
words or ideas. “As long as parents humor children, both 
parents and children will be miserable, for God did not give 
children wisdom enough to know what is best for them.” 
The italicized words are conjunctions, though “as long 
as” would by many be classed as an adverbial phrase. If 
it connects the mind with something that has been said, or 
is to be said, it is a conjunction. “John as well as James 
gambles.” “John in addition to James.” You will note the 
connective groups of words. 

THE INTERJECTION 

The eighth part of speech is called an interjection or 
exclamation. It is not really a part of speech, for it does 


44 


Talks on Grammar 


not connect with or relate to any other part of the sentence. 
It is nearly always followed by the exclamation point: 
“Ah”! “Oh”! “Tut”! “Pshaw”! “Alas”! “Aye”! These are 
interjections or exclamations. Any word used in this way 
may be classed as such. 

“I am, oh, so weary!” The “oh” is an interjection, which 
means that it is thrown into the sentence without any 
real connection with it. This is what interjection means. 
“What! Do you whine when you have pain?” Here “what” 
is an interjection or exclamation. “O” and “Oh” are inter¬ 
jections, and once it was considered important to learn 
when to use the one and when to use the other; but now 
there is not much difference, except that “O” is always with 
a capital and is used in addressing someone or something, 
as: “O silly man, you know not what you want.” “O proud 
simpleton! you know not how insignificant are you and your 
breed amid the greatness of the worlds!” 


Talks on Grammar 


45 


PART II 

PUNCTUATION 

Punctuation is very simple if you will cease trying to 
punctuate words. Punctuate ideas instead. Words never 
call for punctuation except when they convey ideas. 

Here is the purpose of the comma and the semicolon: 
To set apart and sidetrack the words or groups of words 
that would keep us from quickly seeing the main idea. In 
every sentence there is a main idea. Any other statement 
is incidental. It is merely a sidelight. The comma, and 
occasionally the semicolon, is needed to separate these in¬ 
cidental or explanatory ideas, and to keep them from being 
confused with the main idea. We cannot intelligently use 
a comma until we have found the main idea. If we grasp 
this principle, three rules will be sufficient to cover the plac¬ 
ing of every comma. 

Most grammars use twenty to thirty-six rules for placing 
commas. The more rules, the more confusion. I am going 
to give you three rules; and if you study them carefully, 
you will see that they will cause you to put a comma in 
every place that other people’s thirty-six rules call for. By 
following the three-rule plan, we can all use commas alike. 

In the outset let me again urge you to watch for the main 
idea, and separate from it all incidental ideas. 


46 


Talks on Grammar 


THE THREE RULES FOR COMMAS 

RULE 1. Put a comma after an introductory word or 
group of words: “Mr. Smith, you are a good student.” The 
words “Mr. Smith” are introductory. They are used to lead 
up to what I want to say. 

“Wishing to see better, I turned on the lights.” “ Wishing 
to see better” is the introductory group of words. These 
words lead up to my statement that r T turned on the lights”. 

“Acknowledging receipt of your letter, I wish to say that 
I cannot ship the goods.” The introductory group is: 
“Acknowledging receipt of your letter.” 

“Referring to your letter, I would say.” 

“Replying to your favor of the 23d, I wrote you yester¬ 
day.” 

“Say, did you notice how easy it is to find the introduc¬ 
tory word or group of words?” “Say” is the introductory 
word, and must be set off with a comma. 

“My young friend, don’t take yourself too seriously— 
smile.” 

“From what I have seen, I am convinced that the love of 
money is destroying other love.” 

“As I like you, I want to be with you.” 

“If you know of a better way, give me the benefit of it.” 

“If you think you can improve on my plans, take a hand 
and go ahead.” 


Talks on Grammar 


47 


“Yes, I am ready.” 

“No, I did not say that. 

“Why, you are pale.” 

“However much you may do for people, they expect 
more.” 

“Having been too generous, I found it impossible to be 
just.” 

“Really, do you think you are pretty?” 

“Gracious goodness, I’ll never catch up with my work if 
I rest as much as I like.” 

“Though the startling headline shocked me, I did not 
read the article.” 


COMMA RULE II. 

RULE 2. Set off with a comma, or two commas, an ex¬ 
planatory word or group of words. 

“I am sure, Mr. Smith, that you know your business.” 
“Mr. Smith” is explanatory; it shows whom I am address¬ 
ing. 

“I am tired of your foolishness, you vindictive little 
scamp!” Here the explanatory group indicating the person 
to whom I am talking is at the end of the sentence, and one 
comma is placed before it to set it off from the main idea. 

“The invitation, if I had accepted, would have caused me 
to leave my sick father helpless, which was not to be con¬ 
sidered.” Here are two groups set off as explanatory. One 


48 


Talks on Grammar 


is “if I had accepted’'; the other is, “which was not to be 
considered". 

“Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first novel was ‘Uncle 
Tom's Cabin’, a book which did not attract much attention 
at the time." The explanatory or secondary group of words 
here comes at the end of the sentence and is cut off with a 
comma. They are “a book which did not attract much at¬ 
tention at the time”. 

“Harry, who has exaggerated notions of his ability, is 
out seeking jobs that he knows he cannot hold.” The ex¬ 
planatory group is “who has exaggerated notions of his 
ability". Two commas set it off. 

“Idleness is a crime against oneself, as we all know." 
“As we all know” requires a comma before it to cut it out 
of the way of the main idea. 

“Is it, then, a fact that you are a quitter?” “Then” is 
the incidental idea, connecting the main idea with some¬ 
thing that we must imagine has been said before. 

It is customary to set off the year as incidental in dates: 
“In January, 1918, we had some cold weather.” “In Jan¬ 
uary, this year, we had some cold weather.” 

After the name of a postoffice, the name of the state is 
dealt with as being explanatory or incidental: “At Macon, 
Ga., Camp Wheeler was located.” The state may be ab¬ 
breviated when the name of the postoffice precedes it, but 
not elsewhere. 


Talks on Grammar 


49 


“Junior” or “Senior” is usually capitalized, abbreviated 
and set off with commas when following its name. The 
commas are used because “Junior” or “Senior” explains. 
“John Smith, Sr., is more experienced than John Smith, Jr.” 

“The fugitive hid in that corner which was filled with 
plunder.” This sentence will not take a comma, because 
there is no incidental or explanatory idea; but when 
changed slightly, it will need a comma: “The fugitive hid in 
the darkest corner, where plunder had been stored.” 

“Macon has for years been the home of the South’s most 
important agricultural fair, which is held there annually.” 

“Macon, Ga., is the South’s business college center, which 
accounts for much of that city’s prosperity.” 

“John Walker, better known as ‘Billy the Bareback 
Rider’, is an interesting character for little boys.” 

“Man cannot be allowed to judge for himself what laws 
are good and what are bad.” Here there is but one idea, 
which is of course the main one. No comma can be used. 

“The traveler who visits this city has to come first 
through the unsightly portions.” There is no incidental 
idea, and no comma is needed. Some writers put a comma 
after a long subject like this one, but such a custom cannot 
be supported by reason. In very rare instances the subject 
may end with a verb which might be confused with the 
predicate of the sentence; and in such a case a comma after 


50 


Talks on Grammar 


the subject might be excused, but it is certainly not essen¬ 
tial. 

Frequently a group could be slightly changed and made 
into a new sentence. If so, a comma is needed, as when such 
change could be made the idea is incidental or explanatory. 
This is often a good way to tell whether the group really 
shows an incidental idea. 

“A reporter has to describe the appearance of the Fluffy 
Ruffles in the theater boxes, which is an unpleasant duty 
if he wants to enjoy the show.” A comma is necessary after 
“boxes”, because the idea could have been set off in a new 
sentence if we had changed “which” to “this”; therefore 
it is incidental. If we had cut it away and made another 
sentence, we would have had two sentences conveying ex¬ 
actly the same ideas as are conveyed by the one sentence 
that we have used. The two sentences would have read: 
“A reporter has to describe the appearance of the Fluffy 
Ruffles in the theater boxes. This is an unpleasant duty if 
he wants to enjoy the show.” 

“Captain Smith spent several months in Virginia, where 
it is claimed that Pocahontas saved his life.” A comma is 
necessary after “Virginia” because the remainder of the 
sentence is incidental to the main idea. 

“The young business man may learn a valuable lesson by 
reading that Napoleon won his battles by preparing and 
planning before going on the actual field of fighting.” This 


Talks on Grammar 


51 


is a long sentence, but it cannot be cut up with commas, be¬ 
cause there is but one idea. Change it slightly, and you 
can make a comma absolutely necessary: “The young busi¬ 
ness man can learn a valuable lesson from Napoleon, who 
won his battles by preparing and planning before going on 
the actual field of fighting.” 

“Copper, which, with the exception of silver, is the best 
heat conductor known, is extensively used in laboratory 
work.” What is the main idea? It is “that copper is ex¬ 
tensively used in laboratory work”. What is the next in¬ 
cidental idea? That it “is the best heat conductor known”, 
there being one exception. The exception makes the second 
incidental idea. Notice the use of the commas to set off the 
second incidental idea from the first incidental idea. 

“Mr. Buchanan, who, six years ago, had helped to elect a 
Democrat, is now affiliated with the Republicans.” Here is 
another case where we have two incidental ideas, interrupt¬ 
ing the statement that “Mr. Buchanan is now affiliated with 
the Republicans”. The first incidental idea is expressed in 
the words “who helped to elect a Democrat”. The “six 
years ago” is incidental to the “who helped to elect a Dem¬ 
ocrat”. Notice how each of the two incidental ideas was set 
apart. Some students think that any adverb showing 
“when” should be cut off with a comma or commas. That is 
not true. The idea of “when” must be strikingly incidental, 
or it cannot be cut off. “I quit yesterday.” It would be 


52 


Talks on Grammar 


absurd to cut off yesterday with a comma, because the “time 
when’’ is absolutely essential to the main idea. If you are 
in doubt, don’t cut off the “when word or group of words”. 
If you err at all, it will be better to err by omitting the 
comma than to err by using the comma. 

“John Smith, a good student, wants to learn punctua¬ 
tion.” The main idea is that John Smith wants to learn 
punctuation. The incidental idea is “a good student”. I 
separated the incidental idea from the main idea. “The boy 
who wants to succeed will struggle to learn punctuation.” 
In this sentence there is no incidental idea, therefore no 
comma. 

“Finally you will wish you had chosen the righteous way, 
the way of all real intelligence.” 

“When the groves are golden with fruit, or when orange 
blossoms are in evidence, you can find no more beautiful 
scenery in any other part of the world than in Florida.” 
Here we have two introductory groups. They may be called 
explanatory or incidental as well as introductory. 

“In searching for the causes of pellagra, don’t overlook 
the corn that is marketed before it is thoroughly dried.” 
Here the group cut off by the comma is more introductory 
than explanatory, because it contains the word that is most 
important, “pellagra”. 

Those who have been confused by rules for separating 
certain parts of speech from others need to be drilled well 


Talks on Grammar 


58 


on certain sentences that do not take commas. Here are a 
few such sentences: 

WHEN COMMA CANNOT BE USED 

No commas, because the main idea is not complete with¬ 
out all the groups of words: 

“This is a question which is hard to answer.” This means 
the same as “That question is hard to answer”. A comma 
would be entirely wrong, because there is only one idea. 

“A good man is one who says ‘no’ as well as ‘yes’.” 

“I was distressed by the excitableness that you dis¬ 
played.” 

“The thing which we call college spirit is nothing but 
patriotism in its infancy.” 

“We hoped to put an end to those quarrels which had so 
long been disgracing us.” 

“He has lost the cup which he has been using for drink¬ 
ing purposes.” What did he lose? “The cup which he has 
been using for drinking purposes.” If a comma had been 
used after “cup”, the idea conveyed would have been en¬ 
tirely different; because we should have been forced to con¬ 
clude that we had previously been discussing a cup, and 
that all must understand what cup was meant. As a matter 
of fact, we could not satisfactorily know what cup was lost 
unless we use in connection with it the group of words, 
“which he had been using for drinking purposes”. It is 


54 


Talks on Grammar 


strange that so many people would write without a comma 
the sentence if it read, “The cup which he has been using 
for drinking purpose was lost’’; yet they erroneously use 
a comma after cup when they write, “He lost the cup which 
he has been using for drinking purposes”. 

We could make the above sentence require a comma by 
using the last part of it as an incidental or explanatory 
idea, thus: “He has lost his beautiful gold cup, which he 
has been using for drinking purposes.” Here we described 
the cup before we reached the place where you see the 
comma; and it was not absolutely necessary for us to use 
the last part of the sentence, because the description was 
already reasonably satisfactory. The last part was addi¬ 
tional, explanatory, incidental; hence it was proper to set 
it apart with a comma. 

“Bad spelling is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, 
the result of indifference to the importance of spelling.” 
“In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred” is set off with 
commas because it is an incidental or explanatory group 
meant to show that we did not intend to say that in every 
case bad spelling is the result of indifference to the impor¬ 
tance of spelling. 


COMMA RULE III. 

RULE 3. A comma may be used to denote the omission 
of the connective word or words which we called a con- 


Talks on Grammar 


56 


junction; and also to show a failure to repeat a predicate. 

“John, Henry, Joe and Jim are good workers.” If we had 
used “and” after each name, no comma would have been 
used. “John has many friends; Henry, none.” The comma 
was used after “Henry” to show that “has” was omitted. 

“The payers of big taxes are grouped in one class; those 
of smaller amounts, in another; and those of still smaller 
amounts, in another.” 

“John loves work; Henry, play.” 

This style of writing is not always most desirable, but 
when it is employed, the comma may indicate the omission 
of the predicate that has once been used in the sentence. 

When a list of words or a number of groups are used one 
after another, a comma may take the place of the conjunc¬ 
tions that would otherwise be necessary. A great deal of 
haggling has been done over the placing of the comma in 
addition to the conjunction between the last two, as: “John, 
Jim, Joe, and Henry are good workers.” Once in a great 
many cases we might find it necessary to use a comma 
in addition to the conjunction, so as to show that the last 
two members of the list were not intended to be paired 
while the others were mentioned singly; but it seems ab¬ 
surd to use the comma and the conjunction when the comma 
is to take the place of the conjunction everywhere in the list. 

“Paper, pens and ink are all included in ‘stationery’, that 
which the stationer sells.” 


56 


Talks on Grammar 


“Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, Augusta and Columbus are 
Georgia’s largest cities.” 

“He is a preacher, doctor and lawyer; yet, he can’t make 
a living.” 

“Cut out your fancy foods, sleep more, work less and 
smile oftener; then you will live longer.” 

“The Father, Son and Holy Ghost constitute the Holy 
Trinity.” 

“Falsehood, deceit, trickery are signs of weakness in both 
mind and character; yet, the fruits of these are often wor¬ 
shiped by ignorance.” 

THE SEMICOLON 

The comma is the weakest of the punctuation marks. 
The semicolon is the next mark above it. The semicolon 
is used to separate one group of words from another when 
one or both groups contain one or more commas: 

“Atlanta, Ga.; Macon, Ga.; Augusta, Ga.; Savannah, Ga., 
are flourishing cities.” “Atlanta, Ga.”, is one group, and 
a comma is used in it; therefore a semicolon must separate 
it from the next group. “Emmett Small, Macon, Ga.; Lee 
Jordan, Atlanta, Ga.; Sam Smith, Augusta, Ga., are all 
good citizens.” The first group is “Emmett Small, Macon, 
Ga.” A semicolon is used to separate it from the next 
group because commas are used in it. It would make no 
difference if one or more of the groups contained no comma, 


Talks on Grammar 


57 


a semicolon separates the two groups if either contains a 
comma or commas: “Emmett Small of Macon; Lee Jordan, 
Atlanta; Bill Smith of Knoxville, Tenn., are good men.” 

You will note that a semicolon is used after the first 
group. This is because a comma is in the next group. Only a 
comma is used at the end of the last group to separate it 
from the predicate, “are good men”. Not even a comma 
would be used after “Tennessee” in the group if it had not 
been explanatory. The word “Tennessee” being the name 
of the state, and used to explain what Knoxville, or where 
Knoxville is, requires punctuation on each side of it. 

“The dates are January, 1918; September, 1918; Octo¬ 
ber, 1918.” Here the year is used just as the name of the 
state was used in the preceding sentence. 

Sometimes two or more important ideas are expressed 
one after another in the same sentence, and a conjunction 
could unite them. If either group contains a comma, a 
semicolon is used to separate the groups. This is done for 
the same reason that causes us to put a semicolon between 
such groups as we showed in the foregoing illustrations: 

“The real man is courteous, not cringing; affable, not 
familiar; kind, but not too yielding.” 

“The student rejoices in achievement, not in time-killing; 
in thinking, not in frivolity; in results, not in clock-watch¬ 
ing.” 


58 


Talks on Grammar 


“Germany has sought to rule the land; England, the 
seas.” 

“Noisy people can progress for a season; but the silent, 
thinking man continues to go steadily ahead, if he is not 
timid.” 

“The ship, after being wounded, wallowed in the trough 
of the sea; but it kept afloat.” 

“Never fight merely to prove that you are not a coward; 
for, by doing so, you prove that you are a coward.” If it 
had not been for the group “by doing so”, we might have 
used a comma where we have placed the semicolon. You 
will see that by leaving out the “for” we could have made 
two sentences. This would indicate that there are two in¬ 
dependent ideas in the sentence. If either of them is punc¬ 
tuated with a comma, they must be separated from each 
other by a semicolon. This is the way to test the need for 
a semicolon in almost any instance where we have two or 
more subjects and predicates in one sentence. 

Some writers like to throw several short sentences to¬ 
gether with a semicolon instead of a period after each: 

“His answer was curt; his manner was discourteous.” 

A comma is much more popular, however, in such cases: 

“United we stand; divided we fall.” 

Either the comma or the semicolon is acceptable, though 
most grammarians would insist on the semicolon. 


Talks on Grammar 


“Adjectives made from capital nouns are likewise capi¬ 
talized; as, ‘Christmas’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Mohammedan’.” 

“One thing is sure to bring misery in life; i. e., to live 
for self alone.” 

“Use ‘more’ or ‘better’ when comparing two; for instance, 
‘John has more sense than Tom’.” “Ed is better than 
Henry in the study of grammar.” “Which has more, John 
or Henry?” not “Which has most sense, John or Henry?” 

“We work hard; therefore, we should succeed.” 

“I read what you said; however, I don’t believe it.” 

THE PERIOD 

The period ends a sentence that simply makes a state¬ 
ment. An interrogation point ends a sentence that is a 
question. An exclamation point closes a sentence that ex¬ 
claims, or ends with unusual force. A colon ends a sen¬ 
tence that leads you to expect something to follow imme¬ 
diately after it. Thus we have four punctuation points 
that may end a sentence. 

In older literature, it was customary to make long sen¬ 
tences, using as many groups of words as could possibly be 
connected with the main idea. Today, however, the ten¬ 
dency is to make short sentences, using the period as often 
as possible instead of as seldom as possible. 

After every abbreviated word a period is placed to indi¬ 
cate the abbreviation; as “etc.” is an abbreviation for “et 


60 


Talks on Grammar 


cetera”. “Hon.” is an abbreviation for “honorable”. “Sec.” 
is the abbreviation for “secretary”. “Et al.” is an abbre¬ 
viation for “et alii”, meaning “and others”. “N. B.” is the 
abbreviation for “nota bene”, meaning “note carefully” or 
“well”. “I. e.” is the abbreviation for “id est”, meaning 
“that is”. “Viz.” is the abbreviation for “videlicet”, mean¬ 
ing “namely”. “E. g.” is the abbreviation for “exempli 
gratia”, for example. 

If an abbreviated word ends a sentence, the abbreviation 
period will serve also as the punctuation period, because 
two periods could not be used together; as, “I bought shoes, 
hats, suits, etc.” Any other punctuation point can be used 
after an abbreviation period, however: “Did you say you 
bought shoes, hats, suits, etc.?” “Yes; and after I bought 
my shoes, hats, suits, etc., I went on my trip.” The comma, 
semicolon, colon, exclamation, etc., can follow an abbre¬ 
viation period anywhere. 

Be careful about contracted words. They do not use 
an abbreviation period. “Sec’t.” is an incorrect form. Some 
words may be either abbreviated or contracted, but they 
cannot be treated both ways. “Presd’t” is bad form. “Pres.” 
is the correct abbreviation. “Don’t”, “can’t”, “shan’t”, 
“wouldn’t”, “couldn’t”, “mustn’t”, “didn’t” are all contract¬ 
ed words. The contraction is indicated by the apostrophe, 
which is placed where the letter or letters were left out. 
Under no circumstances, however, would you count any one 


Talks on Grammar 


61 


of them as an abbreviated word. “B’ham” may be used 
sometimes as a contraction for Birmingham, but no abbre¬ 
viation period can ever be used after a contracted form. 

THE QUOTATIONS 

Quotation marks are used to indicate words or groups of 
words in unexpected places or when they form an unusual 
part of speech, as “ ‘Is’ is a verb”. The first “is” is used 
as a noun in that sentence; consequently, it is quoted so as 
to aid the reader. Formerly such words or groups of words 
were put in italics, but nowadays the italics are rarely seen. 

“The little T is used as a figure ‘one’ on typewriters that 
have no figure ‘one’.” A letter is made small in sentences 
of this kind, and a quotation placed on each side of it. 
Don’t use a capital letter merely because you quote. A 
quotation begins with a capital letter only when the quoted 
part would require a capital if not quoted. 

You will observe that we use only a single quotation 
mark on each side of a word or group of words to be quoted 
within a quoted sentence. See how this is done in the above 
sentence. If a sentence is quoted, and we single quote a 
group of words that need to be quoted inside of the sen¬ 
tence, we might occasionally find need to quote something 
within the group that was single quoted. In that case we 
double quote again. I said: “John said, ‘I don’t purpose to 
marry any woman who says “it don’t and he don’t and she 


62 


Talks on Grammar 


don’t”; because if I do, I know she will be careless about 
more important matters’.” 

When a group of words requires no punctuation in a sen¬ 
tence and yet must be quoted, the quotation marks come 
next to the last word, and before a punctuation point de¬ 
manded by the sentence. See the many illustrations in this 
book. 

A quotation mark surrounding a sentence is placed after 
the punctuation point that the sentence requires. See the 
quoted words, groups of words and sentences in the various 
parts of the book. 


Talks on Grammar 


68 


PART III 

STYLES AND FORMS 

CAPITALIZING IN POETRY 
Capitalize the first word in each new line of poetry. In¬ 
dent alike the lines that rhyme: 

“Life is real, life is earnest; 

The grave is not its goal. 

Dust thou art to dust returnest, 

Was not spoken of the soul.” 

APOSTROPHE IN CAPITAL LINES 
In writing a caption every letter is a capital. LaGrange, 
McCormick, etc., use the apostrophe thus: “L'GRANGE”, 
“M’CORMICK”. 

OMIT ORDINAL SIGN BEFORE YEAR 
The ordinal signs “st”, “nd”, “rd” and “th” may be arbi¬ 
trarily omitted before the year in date lines; as, “Jan. 1, 
1918”, “Feb. 2, 1918”. A few insist that the sign may be 
omitted whether the year is mentioned or not; but such a 
custom can hardly be recommended if the day is sounded as 
an ordinal. If we say “January two”, of course the ordinal 
sign is not expected; but if we say “January second”, our 
figure is not complete without the “nd”; as, “Jan. 2nd”. 


64 


Talks on Grammar 


COMMA AFTER COMPLIMENTARY CLOSE 
A comma is used after the complimentary close of a 
letter; as, “Yours very truly”, “Yours with best wishes”, 
“Yours respectfully”, etc. The first word of such phrases is 
the only one capitalized. 

TWO POSSESSIVES 

Two or more nouns may be used in the possessive for one 
object possessed. Only the last one mentioned takes the 
apostrophe if all own jointly: “Boys and men’s clothing”, 
“Smith & Jones’ Grocery”. But if ownership is not joint— 
if the thing possessed is not the same for each, an apostro¬ 
phe is used after each possessive noun: “Ladies’ and Men’s 
Wearing Apparel”. 

PLURAL AND POSSESSIVE COMPOUNDS 

Much energy has been used to show how to pluralize and 
to write possessive forms for compound words, but the fol¬ 
lowing may be relied upon: 

“Brother-in-law” pluralized becomes “brothers-in-law”; 
but the singular possessive is “brother-in-law’s”. The plural 
possessive is “brothers-in-law’s”, the compound carrying its 
plural form in the “brothers”. This is the same principle 
that causes us to write the plural possessive of “men” 
“men’s”. 

“Anybody-else” is really a compound, and should have the 


Talks on Grammar 


65 


apostrophe and “s” added to the “else” to make possessive, 
“anybody-else’s”. 

THE CHARACTER “&” 

A character “&” has been devised for use in firm names 
and in corporation names: “Smith & Jones”, “The Smith & 
Jones Grocery Co.”, “The Macon & Savannah Transporta¬ 
tion Co.” 

CAPITALS IN SALUTATIONS 
It is customary to capitalize only nouns in salutations; 
except, of course, the first word: “Dear Sir and Friend”, 
“My dear Sir and Brother”, “My dear Uncle Joe”, “Dear 
Dr. Brown”, “My dear Dr. Brown”. 

HOW TO WRITE PER CENT 
For a long time it was deemed necessary to put a period 
after “cent.” in “per cent.” Today, however, it is claimed 
that these two words have been sufficiently Anglicized to 
regard them as complete without the period. “Cent” means 
“relating to 100”. It is the one-hundredth part of 100. If 
it is an abbreviation in “per cent”, it might be argued that 
it is also an abbreviation in “one cent”. The period is 
rapidly disappearing from “per cent”. 

NUMERATORS AND DENOMINATORS 
When a fraction is spelled out, the numerator is always 
hyphenated with the denominator: One-half, two-thirds, 
three-fourths, one- one-hundredth, one- ten-thousandth. 


66 


Talks on Grammar 


COMPOUND NUMBERS 

Such compounds as twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty- 
three; thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, and 
all others made by adding the nine digits to the multiples 
of ten use a hyphen when spelled out: 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 
27, 28, 29, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99. Twenty-one 
means “twenty and one”. A hyphen takes the place of the 
“and”. “One-twenty-first” would be the way to spell out a 
fraction with such numbers. 

MANUFACTURED ADJECTIVES 

Groups of words expressing age, dimension, etc., are 
often used with adjective value. In such cases they are 
compounded by using a hyphen or hyphens: “A 2-year-old 
child”, “a 40-year-old man”, “a 50-year-old tree”, “a 6-inch 
plank”, “a 6-foot man”. Nobody seems able to explain why 
we say “A 2-year-old child” and then in the next sentence 
say “A 2-months-old child”. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, 
months are used in the plural form after plural numbers 
in such adjectives; but by custom we use years, inches, feet, 
etc., in the singular form even when the number in the 
adjective is plural. It is good style to say “I am a 6-foot 
man”, but it would be considered a horrible blunder if I 
said “I am 6 foot tall”. The singular noun can never be 
qualified by a plural numeral, and' can never be used with 
it except when the two are hooked together with hyphens. 


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67 


PRONOUNS RELATING TO DEITY 

The rule was once laid down that pronouns relating to 
Deity should be capitalized when we might lose sight of the 
noun for which it stood. That rule was made in times when 
men wrote long sentences and would use so many pronouns 
that it took a close student to understand what was written. 
Now, we consider one a poor writer if he puts his pronouns 
too far from his nouns, and if he repeats a pronoun in a 
sentence to stand for more than one noun. Yet, in spite of 
this simplification of style, we now capitalize the pronoun 
every time it is used in the place of the name of Deity. 

“Providence” and other words used as a substitute for 
“God” are capitalized. We also capitalize “Bible”, a word 
meaning book, but as we use it we consider it the book of 
all books; and out of respect to the Christian religion we 
capitalize it. 

STUDY PRONOUNS 

Most people use pronouns recklessly, and in reading they 
pay little heed to the meaning of the pronoun or its relation¬ 
ship to the noun for which it stands. Some nouns may be 
represented by either a plural or a singular pronoun. 
“Army” may be referred to as “it” or “they”. “Country”, 
“a people”, “company”, and many others are in this class. 
We call them collective nouns. If such a noun is used in its 
collective sense, ‘it” is the pronoun needed, but if used with 


68 


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reference to the individuals which compose the army, the 
country, the company, etc., “they” or “them” will be the 
pronoun required. If “it” is used or could be used as the 
pronoun, the verb accompanying the noun will be singular; 
if “they” or “them” could be used as the pronoun the plural 
form of the verb must be used. Don’t use the noun in the 
singular sense and in the plural sense in the same sentence. 
Don’t use both the singular and plural pronouns to stand 
for the same noun in the same sentence. In reading notice 
carefully to see to what noun a pronoun relates. 

TWO OR MORE SUBJECTS OF ONE PREDICATE 

When two or more subjects are disjoined and have differ¬ 
ent number before a predicate, the predicate takes the num¬ 
ber of the subject closest to it: “The boy or the men have 
finished the work”; “The girls or the woman is wrong”. 
If, however, the subjects are of different person, it is better 
to repeat the predicate: “You or I am wrong” would not be 
as graceful as “You are wrong or I am wrong”. 

ORDINALS ARE NOT ABBREVIATIONS 

An ordinal number is made by adding “st” to all numbers 
ending in one; as, 1st, 21st, 31st, 41st, 51st, 61st, 71st, 81st, 
91st, 101st, 121st, 1,001st, 10,001st, 100,001st, etc. 

Also by adding “nd” to all numbers ending in 2; as, 2nd, 
22nd, 32nd, 42nd, 52nd, 62nd, 72nd, 82nd, 92nd, 102nd. 


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69 


Also by adding “rd” to numbers ending in 3; as, 3rd, 
23rd, 33rd, 43rd, 53rd, 63rd, 73rd, 83rd, 93rd, 103rd. 

It as been thoughtlessly suggested that “d” would be 
sufficient after “2’s” and “3’s”, but that interferes with the 
scheme of building ordinals. 

Also add “th” after any number above 3: 4th, 5th, 6th, 
7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 
18th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 
34th, 35th, etc. 

These ordinals are not abbreviations, and under no cir¬ 
cumstances do they require an abbreviation period. 

COMMAS AND ABBREVIATIONS 

We sometimes find people who think that when a word is 
abbreviated a period and comma should be used. Where 
such an idea originated is hard to determine. There is no 
punctuation required or forbidden by an abbreviation. An 
abbreviated word requires an abbreviation period after it; 
but the same punctuation would be placed after the abbre¬ 
viation period as would be used if the word had been spelled 
out. No additional period can be used after the abbrevia¬ 
tion period, but this is the only way that an abbreviation 
affects punctuation. A comma may follow an abbreviation 
period; or a semicolon could be used after the abbreviation 
period, a colon, an interrogation point, an exclamation, a 


70 


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dash—anything that would be required if the abbreviated 
word had been spelled out. 

PUNCTUATING ADDRESSES 
For punctuating an address, put a comma after each 
line, except the last line, which ends with a period. 

OFFICIAL TITLES IN ADDRESSES 
In addressing a letter to an official, it is often necessary 
to put the title after and on the same line with the name. 
In that event a comma is used after the title as well as 
before it: 

“Mr. Woodrow Wilson, President, 

Winning the War Corporation, 

Macon, Ga.” 

The title at the beginning of the Company makes a slight 
difference in meaning, and no comma is required after the 
title: 

“Mr. Woodrow Wilson, 

President Winning the War Corporation, 

Macon, Ga.” 

TWO TITLES OF THE SAME KIND 
Never use two titles of the same kind in connection with 
a name. Don’t say “Mr. Woodrow Wilson, Esq.”; nor “Mr. 
Judge John Brown”. “Mr.” may be used, however, before 


Talks on Grammar 


71 


a name that is followed by such designating titles as “Presi¬ 
dent’’, “Secretary”, “Clerk”, etc. 

TWO OR MORE TITLES IN SALUTATION 
When you are writing to “Rev. and Mrs. A. C. Dargan”, 
the salutation if familiar will be “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dar¬ 
gan”; if formal, it will be “Dear Sir and Madam”. The 
same form would be used if you write to “Rev. H. E. and 
Mrs. Dr. E. C. Walker”. “Dear Sir” or “Madam” is good 
enough for any salutation nowadays, since we have passed 
out of the time when we used “His Highness”, “Your High¬ 
ness”, “Your Excellency”, etc. Democracy condemns kow¬ 
towing or too much subserviency in addresses. 

DIVISION OF WORDS 

Words cannot be divided' at the end of a line, unless the 
part to be carried over into the next line is an independent 
syllable containing two or more letters. Never carry into 
the second line a syllable with only one letter. “Loved” 
could not be divided because the “ed” is not sounded as a 
separate syllable. If it is divided it must be pronounced 
“love-ed”. 

HOW TO EXPRESS “CENTS” 

Some curious styles are used in writing “cents” in read¬ 
ing matter: $0.05, .05, 5c, 5C, 5 c, 5tf, 5 cents. The last is to 
be preferred. 


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POSSESSIVES WITH ‘TNG” VERBS 
Many good writers violate the grammar rule requiring 
the possessive form of nouns and pronouns in connection 
with verbs ending in “ing”: “Think of me doing that”; the 
rule of grammar demands that we should say “Think of my 
doing that”. “After him getting ready” should not be used 
for “After his getting ready”. “In spite of him working so 
hard 1 , he failed” should be “In spite of his working so hard, 
he failed”. “I told of ‘John’s going’ ”, not of “John going”. 

COMMAS TO POINT OFF FIGURES 
As the writer should strive to make himself easily under¬ 
stood, it is a mistake to omit the comma that is needed to 
point off each three figures from the right when you express 
large numbers. If the comma is omitted, the reader must 
count off the three figures with the eye unaided. If the 
number is very large, this is difficult, and such a task 
should never be imposed on your reader. Don’t use a 
period, but a comma, for this purpose: Write 5,000, 
1 , 000 , 000 , 1 , 000 , 000 , 000 . 

UNNECESSARY NOUGHTS AFTER DOLLARS 
In old-style bookkeeping, it was customary to use the 
decimal and two ciphers after the dollars. This style was 
followed by many when “dollars” was expressed in figures 
in reading matter. The only argument in favor of such a 


Talks on Grammar 


73 


style anywhere is that it may prevent a thief from increas¬ 
ing the amount by adding “cents” when the ciphers are not 
used. Each cipher must be closely examined by the auditor 
who goes over the books and by the bookkeeper when he 
undertakes to add his columns, and this causes a great deal 
of needless labor. The style has almost entirely disap¬ 
peared in modern bookkeeping and 1 it is rarely used in read¬ 
ing matter. We write “$5” instead of “$5.00”. If there is 
any danger of crookedness, it is better to spell out the num¬ 
ber in reading matter or repeat it by spelling out in paren¬ 
theses; as, $5 (five dollars). Checking systems will show 
the crookedness if it should creep into bookkeeping. 

PLURALIZING FIGURES, LETTERS AND SYMBOLS 

The apostrophe and “s” are used sometimes for forming 
the pural. The plural of a figure, a letter or a symbol is 
formed by adding the apostrophe and “s”: “Send immedi¬ 
ately one dozen each of 5’s, 6’s, a’s, b’s &’s, %’s”. 

Occasionally we find a word that can’t be brought within 
the rules of spelling to form its plural. In such event we 
may use the apostrophe and “s” to form the plural: “Why’s” 
may be used as an example. 

FOREIGN WORDS 

The use of a foreign word in English composition does 
not show learning in every case. It often shows a weakness 


74 


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in the knowledge that one has of our own language. Why- 
use a foreign word that few understand if we can find a 
good English word that all of us understand? To say “I 
make $5.00 per day” is not as good English as to say “I 
make $5.00 a day”. It is well for us to know the foreign 
words that are so frequently used, but it is better to use 
good English than good mixture. 

DOUBLE PAST TIME 

A lady said that if she had known so many strangers 
would be at the party she would not have let her daughter 
gone. This and similar errors are frequently made by peo¬ 
ple who use the past tense twice in one statement. If the 
first verb takes us into the past, the next verb should be 
used in the present. The lady meant to say that if she had 
known that so many strangers would be there she would not 
have allowed her daughter to go. “We would not have 
been permitted to do a thing”; not “We would not have been 
permitted to have done a thing”. “I had hoped to go with 
you”, not “I had hoped to have gone with you”. “I wanted 
to be with you”, not “I wanted to have been with you”. “I 
would have liked to go on the trip”, not “I would have 
liked to have gone on the trip”. 

You will find many educated people making this blunder 
regularly, simply because their attention has not been called 
to it. 


75 


Talks on Grammar 

FOOLISH EXPRESSIONS 

Grammar frequently follows language changes, instead 
of leading or outlining the rules by which speech must be 
governed. Sometimes in a community people will develop 
the habit of using ungrammatical if not illiterate expres¬ 
sions, such as “You all should be at work”. This is a 
Southern error. We have fallen into it because our pro¬ 
noun “you” has the same form in the plural as in the sin¬ 
gular, and we don’t know any other way to make a distinc¬ 
tion. We say “you all” when we mean “all of you”. 

Our Northern friends ridicule us, and instead of saying 
“you all”, they say “you uns”. “All of you” would be better 
than “you all” or “you uns”. 

A man met his friend and exclaimed, “I likedter died last 
night”. It is supposed that he meant that he liked to have 
died, but what does that mean? Your dictionary will fail to 
show what happened to him. “Lacked” means “missed some¬ 
thing by a margin”. “Liked” means “fancied, or wished 
for”. So it seems that “lacked” is what was intended. The 
last dictionary, however, tries to give to “liked” a meaning 
that would show that the man approached near unto death. 
Would it not be better English for the man to say “I nearly 
died last night”, or, “I almost died last night”? 


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Talks on Grammar 


“MOST” FOR “ALMOST”—“SOME” FOR 
“SOMEWHAT” 

When President McKinley was shot, the papers reported 
his condition from day to day. One of the big papers came 
out one morning with the following headline: “President 
McKinley is some better today.” When the editor who wrote 
the headline reached his desk, he found a note of discharge 
and a check for his salary due to that date. The following 
curt message was on the discharge: “Such grammar is not 
desired by this paper.” That editor has never since written 
“some” for “somewhat”. “Some” is an adjective and could 
not modify “better”, which is another adjective. “Some¬ 
what” is an adverb and can modify “better”. 

It is safe to say that the editor who received this shock 
would not say that anybody was “most dead”. He has by 
this time learned that “almost” is the adverb and not 
“most”; and that “some” is not an adverb. 

PARAGRAPHING 

Short paragraphs are popular. Make a paragraph every 
time the line of thought changes. Make one often. If a 
letter has more than two sentences, it will nearly always 
allow a paragraph. Long paragraphs are to be avoided. 

SALUTATION IN A LETTER OR ADDRESS 

Don’t put a colon and a dash after “Gentlemen”, “Dear 
Sir”, “Dear Madam” or other salutation in the beginning of 


Talks on Grammar 


77 


a letter or speech. The colon is sufficient. A few people 
follow the old form and use the comma, but the colon is 
preferable. If a comma is used no other mark is needed 
with it. 

FIRST LINE AFTER SALUTATION 

One of the old customs was to start the first line of a 
letter right under the last of the salutation. This is out 
of date. Start the first line of the letter just where you will 
start the first line of each paragraph. The first line of the 
letter is really the first line of the first paragraph. All 
paragraphs should start at the same point, just as in 
printing. 

CAPITALIZING WORDS 

“North”, “South”, “East”, “West” and their adjectives, 
“Northern”, “Southern”, “Eastern”, “Western” begin with 
a capital letter when they refer to geographical divisions, 
but not when relating to mere directions of the compass. 

The subject of an entire letter is often capitalized. 

“The State”, “the City”, “the County” may begin with a 
capital when they mean the people as a political organiza¬ 
tion, as “The City will pave its streets”; “The County will 
build bridges”; “The State will soon hold elections”. If, 
however, we say “The politicians stumped the state , we 
will use no capital “s”. Very few would insist on the capi¬ 
tal letter in any of the cases cited, but some writers would 
consider it an error if the rule should be violated. 


78 Talks on Grammar 

ABBREVIATING STATES AND MONTHS 
Be careful not to abbreviate a word unless you know a 
rule for doing so. When in doubt, spell it out. The name 
of a state can never be abbreviated unless the name of a 
postoffice immediately precedes it: “Macon, Ga.” Never ab¬ 
breviate the name of the state even when the name of a 
county immediately precedes without the postoffice: “Bibb 
county, Georgia”. “Macon, Bibb county, Ga.”, would be 
correct. This is style, and not reason. 

The name of a month may be abbreviated when imme¬ 
diately followed by a day of a month, but not otherwise: 
“Aug. 12, 1918” is correct. “August” must be spelled out 
when you write “12th August, 1918”; also when you leave 
out the day of the month: “August, 1918”. This again is 
style. 

WHEN TO USE FIGURES 
Never begin a sentence with a figure. Figures have no 
capital letters. “500 men subscribed” would be wrong. 
Spell out a number at the beginning of a sentence, so as to 
begin the sentence with a capital. In other cases, any num¬ 
ber requiring more than two figures may be expressed in 
figures: “I bought 100 mules for the Government.” If “I 
bought fifty mules for the Government”, the “fifty” would 
use less than three figures; therefore it should be spelled 
out. 


Talks on Grammar 


79 


Ages, dates and values are expressed in figures regard¬ 
less of the three-figure rule. “I bought 20 cents’ worth of 
sugar.” “I bought $1 worth of candy.” “I am 16 years 
old.” “I was born Jan. 1, 1901.” 

WHEN TO ABBREVIATE ‘‘NUMBER” 

“No.” is used as an abbreviation for “number” only when 
a figure or figures follow it: “A No. .2 shoe suits me.” “Your 
scholarship is No. 26,000.” 

Never use the abbreviation anywhere except immediately 
before figures and never use “number” immediately before 
figures. 

“A”, “AN”, “THE” 

These were once called the articles, but now they are 
called adjectives. “A man” means no particular man. “The 
man” means some particular man. “A” is used before a 
consonant sound, as “a boy”, “a horse”, “a mule”, “a river”. 
When a vowel sound comes after the “a” it is difficult for 
us to articulate two vowel sounds so close together, as “a 
apple”, “a egg”, so for the sake of getting smoother sound, 
we put “n” after the “a” when “a” is to be used before 
another vowel sound. We say, then, “an apple”, “an egg”, 
“an everlasting torment”. 

Some unnecessary efforts have been made to vary this 
rule before an “h”, but if the sound following “a” is a 


80 


Talks on Grammar 


consonant sound, “a” will be used alone; if a vowel sound 
follows the “a”, “n” will be added to the “a”. 

HOW TO WRITE “ETC.” 

When we are enumerating a list of items and suddenly 
decide that we have named enough, although there are 
others, we frequently cut short by saying “etc.”, which 
means “and so forth” or “and such things”. Because of 
the abruptness with which we close the enumeration before 
saying “etc.”, a comma always is written after the word 
immediately preceding “etc.” Don’t wrTte “ect.”, and it is 
not considered good form to write “&c.” The “et” means 
“and”, “c” is for “cetera”, “others”. Never use “and” be¬ 
fore “etc.” 

MISUSE OF “EITHER” 

“Either” is forbidden when you refer to anyone of three 
or more. Either may be selected when you are considering 
two, but if you are considering three or more, you say 
“anyone” or “one”. 

“NEITHER” FOLLOWED BY “NOR” 

“Neither” is not followed by “or”. We say “Neither John 
nor Jim had anything to do with it”, but we should not say 
“Neither John or Jim”. “Nor” follows “neither”. 


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81 


COMMERCIAL ABBREVIATIONS 
Such commercial abbreviations as “o. k.”, “o. k.’d”, 
“c.o.d.”, “f.o.b” and the like are not capitalized any longer, 
and very few writers put any spacing after the periods, 
merely crowding the letters against the abbreviation pe¬ 
riods. We no longer capitalize “ult.”, “prox.”, “inst.” We 
don't capitalize a letter that is used as a noun: “The letter 
‘c’ is almost like an ‘o’.” 

“SELF” AS SUFFIX AND PREFIX 
“Self” is never hyphenated when used at the end of a 
word, but it is always hyphenated when used as a prefix: 
Myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, your¬ 
selves, themselves, oneself. 

Self-esteem, self-deceit, self-denial, self-abnegation, self- 
control, self-centered, self-indulgent, self-destruction, self¬ 
elevation, self-abasement. 

“Selfish’' is recognized as a prime word and does not take 
the hyphen. 

When a hyphen is used we say it compounds a word, ex¬ 
cept when used to divide a syllable or syllables at the end 
of a line. 

FIRM NAMES OR CORPORATION NAMES 
When two or more names have equal rank in a firm or 
corporation name or in a firm name a hyphen unites them 


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when “&” is omitted; for instance, ‘‘The Taylor-Jones 
Grocery Company”, “The Smith-Brown-Walker Mining 
Company”, “The Macon-Savannah Railway Company”, 
“The Georgia-Alabama Business College”. These hyphens 
take the place of the 

CAPITALIZE TITLES OF CHAPTERS, 
LESSONS, ETC. 

In writing “Lesson 1, Chapter 2”, and tiles to books or 
subjects discussed in chapters, each important word should 
be capitalized. “Lesson 1” should start with a capital “1” 
and a figure “1” should be used, or if for any reason “one” 
is spelled out, a capital “o” should be used. “Chapter 2” 
would be written in the same way. This is because “Lesson 
1” is used as the title for the lesson. “Chapter 2” is used 
as the title for the chapter. The same is true of “Section 3”. 

AVOID QUAINT EXPRESSIONS 
The best dressed person is the one whose dress attracts 
no attention. The best writer is the one whose thought is 
impressive but whose words escape notice. Avoid the use 
of such words as “ere”, “whilst”, “monies”, “cheque”, 
tyre , etc. These are freakish when used in ordinary busi¬ 
ness correspondence. Try to avoid the grotesque. Imagine 
a sober business man’s saying, “Let me have a check ere 
the sun goes down”. 


Talks on Grammar 


83 


“SAME” IS NOT A PRONOUN 
Do not fall into the error of using “same” as a pronoun. 
It is very bad grammar to say, “Let us have same by return 
mail” or “I hope you will attend to same at once”. We 
have a sufficient number of pronouns for it to be unneces¬ 
sary to manufacture one out of “same”. 

WRITING IN THIRD PERSON 
It has always been objectionable for a writer to thrust 
himself forward in what he is saying. If we represent a 
cause, people may be interested in that cause, but they are 
not so much interested in us as individuals. Therefore, we 
are advised not to discuss ourselves in what we write. Some 
people imagine they have put themselves in the background 
if they use the third person in referring to themselves in¬ 
stead of using pronouns of the first person; for instance, 
instead of saying, “I am anxious to hear from you by return 
mail”, I say, “The writer is anxious to hear from you by 
return mail”. Say “I” am, not “the writer” is. 

PUT STAMPS ON STRAIGHT 
Fold your letters carefully. Put stamps straight on 
envelope. See that they are in the proper place. Let 
everything you do show that you are painstaking and care¬ 
ful. Write on even margins. If you don’t know how to 
make your letter appear as well as other people’s letters, 


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find out why. Remember that superior people prove their 
superiority only through superior deeds. 

WORDS TO WATCH 

In another book an effort will be made to show you when 
to use a hyphen. Here is one word to watch; there are 
others. “Lease” means to take over for a period of time. 
“Re-lease” means to rent again, or to renew the “lease”. 
“Release”, without the hyphen, means “to turn loose”, “to 
surrender”, which is just the opposite of the “re-lease”. 

DATE EVERY PAPER 

Remember that a paper is valueless if it bears no date. 
Form the habit of thinking about and recording the date on 
every paper that you write. Even a telephone message 
should be dated and filed away. No kind of letter should 
be put away into the file unless it is dated. The time to 
date it is when the letter is being written. 

SPLITTING CONSONANTS 

There is a rule of spelling which requires us to double 
the final consonant before we add a suffix beginning with 
a vowel. This must be done when the accent hits the 
final consonant in a word, as “Run”; the accent hits the “n”. 
The “n” must be doubled before we can add “ing”. The 
rule for dividing syllables is to carry the second “n” into 
the next line, when you haven’t room at the end of a line 


Talks on Grammar 


85 


to add the “ning”. “Refer” requires us to double the “r” 
before adding “ing” or “ed”. If “refer” comes at the end 
of a line the “ring” could be run over, but “red” could not 
be run over, because “red” would 1 require an independent 
sounding if run over. The word “referred”, if the “red” 
is run over, would sound like “re-fer-red” with three syl¬ 
lables. “Planning” could be divided by running over “ning”. 
But “planned” could not be divided. The rule for division 
is, “If the added syllable can be run over, it carries the 
extra consonant with it, if the extra consonant had to be 
added to the word under the spelling rule”. 

INDEFINITE COMPOUNDS 
Indefinite or uncertain compounds may take a hyphen as 
follows: “There are several 2- or 3-year-old children; as 
well as a dozen 40- and 50-year-old men.” 

“TWO PAIR, TWO KIND, ALL SORT” 

Don’t use such expressions. They should be “two pairs, 
two kinds, all sorts”. A recent publication on grammar 
seeks to justify them because we say “two dozen” instead of 
“two dozens”. Such reasoning is absurd. We say “two 
dozen” because we say “two hundred”, “two thousand”, 
“two million”, etc. Dozen is singular or plural. 

We can’t say “two set”, “two suit”, “two lot”, because 
the plural numeral demands the plural form of the noun 


86 


Talks on Grammar 


that it qualifies, and these nouns form their plural by 
adding “s”, making “two sets”, “two suits”, “two lots”. It 
is painful to hear an educated person say “all sort of 
things”, “several pair of shoes”, “these kind”, “those kind”, 
“two team”. 


“NOBODY BUT YOU AND I” 

Don’t make such errors as, “Nobody came but you and I”. 
You would not say, “Nobody came but I”. Then you cannot 
use “I” if others are mentioned with it after a preposition. 
“But” in this sentence is a preposition. See the lecture on 
prepositions. 

IRREGULAR VERBS 

Here are a few irregular verbs that are sometimes mis¬ 
used. The second in each set is definite past, stating when. 
The third is indefinite past and always requires an aux¬ 
iliary or helping verb. 

I arise now, I arose just now, I have arisen. 

I awake immediately, I awoke yesterday, I have awaked. 
I bear pain, I bore pain yesterday, I have borne pain. 

I beat you now, I beat you yesterday, I have beaten you. 
I begin at once, I began just now, I have begun. 

I bid you adieu, I bade you adieu, I have bidden you 
adieu. 

I bite the apple, I bit it, I have bitten It. 

I blow out the light, I blew it out, I have blown it out. 


Talks on Grammar 


87 


I break my vow, I broke it, I have or had broken it. 

I bring you my trouble, I brought them, I have or had 
brought them. 

I burst soap bubbles now, I burst them yesterday (not 
busted or bursted), I have burst them. 

I cling to hope, I clung to hope, I have clung to it. 

I come when called, I came (not come) when called, I 
have come. 

I do my work, I did (not done) my work, I have done it. 
I draw my pay, I drew it, I have drawn it. 

I drink, I drank, I have drunk or I have drank. 

I drive a car, I drove it, I have driven it. 

I eat now, I ate (not et nor eat) yesterday, I have eaten. 
I fight, I fought, I have fought. 

We freeze, we froze, I have frozen. 

Birds fly, they flew, they have flown. 

You forsake us, you forsook us, you have forsaken us. 
Get, got, have gotten or have got. 

Give, gave, have given. 

Go, went, have gone. 

Grow, grew, have grown. 

Hide, hid, have or had hid or hidden. 

Hens lay, they laid, they have laid. 

Lie, lay, have lain. 

Light, lit or lighted, have lighted or have lit. 

Ride, rode, have ridden. 


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Ring, rang, have rung. 

Rise, rose, have risen. 

Run, ran, have run. 

I see you, I saw you, I have seen you. 
Shake, shook, have shaken. 

Shine, shone, have shone. 

Shrink, shrank, have shrunk. 

Sing, sang or sung, have sung. 

Sink, sank or sunk, have sunk. 

Slide, slid, have slidden or have slid. 
Spring, sprang, have sprung. 

Strive, strove, have striven. 

Swim, swam, have swum. 

Write, wrote, have written. 


INDEX 

Abbreviations Do Not Affect Punctuation, 56, 57. 

Adjective—Extra Form for Possessive, 20. 

How to Know One; Its Use, 11. 

Never Changes Form, 13. 

How to Use Two or More, 15. 

Adverbs—Meaning of Word, 31. 

How to Know Them, 31-38. 

Their Uses and Forms, 30-37. 

Never Go with Verbs Showing Condition, 33. 

Colon—Leads You to Expect Another Statement, 56. 
Contracted Words Not Abbreviated, 60. 

Conjunctions—When They Join or Disjoin, 42, 43. 
Comma—Three Simple Rules, 45. 

Comma—Grows to Semicolon, 46-56. 

Comma—After Introductory Word or Group, 46. 

To Set Off Explanatory Word or Group, 47. 
When Cannot Be Used, 53. 

To Denote Omission of Conjunction, 55. 

To Denote Failure to Repeat Predicate, 55. 

How Grammar Begins, 8. 

Interjection, 43, 44. 

The Effect of, 43, 44. 

Neglect of Grammar, 3. 

Noun—Big Nouns and Little Nouns, 10. 

How to Know One, 10. 


90 


Index 


Participles—A Myth, 36. 

Can They Modify Nouns? 36. 

Why We Must Know Them, 33. 

Parts of Speech—Eight of Them, 12. 

How to Know Them, 11, 37. 

Period—Full Stop and Abbreviation, 59. 

Preposition—It Affects Only Pronoun Forms, 38-43. 

How to Use Correctly, 39. 

Pronouns—Different Forms for Different Purposes, 19. 
Following Prepositions, 19. 

Indefinite, 21. 

Indirect Object, 20. 

Gender of; “It” is Uncertain or Neuter, 16. 

How They Change Form, 16. 

Possessive Forms Without Apostrophe, 17. 

Possessive—New and Simpler Rule for Writing Sing¬ 
ular and Plural, 18. 

Self and Selves; Uses and Abuses, 21, 22. 

Used Like Adjectives, 20. 

Why We Need Them, 15. 

Punctuation—How to Make It Easy, 45. 

Quotation Marks—Their Uses, 61. 

When Single, 61, 62. 

When Before Punctuation Points, 62. 

Semicolon—A Grown-up Comma, 56. 

Styles in Writing, 63. 

“A”, “An”—Why We Have Both, 79. 

Abbreviating—When to Avoid, 78, 79. 


Index 


91 


Styles in Writing— 

Abbreviations Have Nothing to Do with Punctuation, 69 
Addresses—How Punctuated, 70. 

Adjectives Manufactured, 66. 

Apostrophe—When Omitted and When Repeated in Two 
or More Possessives, 64. 

Apostrophe in All-Cap Lines, 63. 

Apostrophe and “s” to Pluralize, 73. 

Big Numbers—Comma Required, 72. 

Capitalizing Certain Nouns and Adjectives, 77. 

“Cents”—How to Express in Writing, 71. 

Character Used Only in Firm or Corporation 

Names, 65. 

Complimentary Close, Comma Needed, 64. 

Comma Required to Point Off Big Numbers, 72. 
Commercial Abbreviations—Forms Made by Custom, 81 
Date Every Paper, 84. 

Disjoined Subjects—How They Affect the Predicate, 68. 
Division of Words, 71. 

Dollars—Noughts Not Needed, 72. 

Double Past Time—To Be Avoided, 74. 

“Either”, “Any”—How to Use, 80. 

Error in Avoiding Use of Pronoun of First Person, 83. 
“Etc.”—How to Write, 80. 

Figures—When to Use and When to Avoid, 78. 

Firm and Corporation Names Hyphenated, 81. 

First Line of Letter—Where to Begin, 77. 

Foolish Expressions, 75. 

Foreign Words—To Be Discouraged, 73. 

Hyphens Sometimes Change Meanings, 84. 


92 


Index 


Styles in Writing— 

Indefinite Compounds—Hyphenating, 85. 

“Ing” Verbs Demand Possessive, 72. 

“Most” for “Almost”, 76. 

“Neither”—Followed by “Nor”, 80. 

“Nobody Came But You and I”, 86. 

“Number”—When to Abbreviate, 79. 

Numbers—Hyphen Required if Spelled Out, 66. 
Numerators and Denominators—When Spelled Out, 65. 
Ordinal Numbers Are Not Abbreviations, 68. 

Ordinal Numbers—How to Form Them, 68. 

Ordinal Sign Preceding Year, 63. 

Paragraphing—When and How to Paragraph, 76. 

Per Cent—How to Express, 65. 

Plural Compounds and Possessive Case, How Ex¬ 
pressed, 64. 

Plural for Letters, Figures and Symbols, 73. 

Poetry—Each New Line Begins with Capital, 63. 

Poetry—Indent Alike Rhyming Lines, 63. 

Pronouns Relating to Deity, 67. 

Pronouns Used Recklessly Cause Confusion, 67. 

Quaint or Grotesque Expressions, 82. 

Running Over Extra Consonant to Divide, 84. 
Salutation—Colon Sufficient, 76. 

Salutation—Where to Begin Next Line, 77. 

Salutations—How to Write, 65. 

Salutations—When Two or More Names, 71. 

“Same”—Should Not Be Used as a Pronoun, 83. 
“Self”—When Hyphenated, 81. 

Titles of Books, Chapters, Sections, Articles, 82. 


Index 


93 


Styles in Writing— 

“Some” for “Somewhat”, 76. 

Stamps—Put Them on Straight, Why? 83. 

“Two Pair, Two Kind, All Sort”, 85. 

“You All”, “You Uns”, 75. 

Verbs— 

All But “Third Person” Pronouns Take Plural, 29-31. 
All Take Plural Verbs Except “He”, “She”, “It”, 30-31. 
Auxiliary Only Changes, 27-29. 

Auxiliaries That Never Change Form, 28. 

Definite and Indefinite Past, 26, 27. 

How Their Forms Change for Time, 32-34. 

How Their Forms Change for Number, 25. 

Irregular, 86. 

Meaning, Purpose; Necessary, 22. 

Of Action; of Mere State of Being, 23. 

One-Word and Two-Word, 26. 

Regular and Irregular Changes, 27. 

When Used with Adjectives, 23. 

When Used with Adverbs, 23, 24. 

With Pronouns, 29. 

What Is Grammar, 8. 

When to Begin Study of Grammar, 7. 


BOOKS YOU MAY WANT 

The author of this book has written other text-books as follows: 

G. A. B. Shorthand Primer. The best 
features of all standard systems com¬ 
bined in one simple volume, easy to com¬ 
prehend, quickly learned and capable of 
the highest speed development, as it con¬ 
tains the best ideas of the world’s great¬ 
est reporters. 

G. A. B. Phrases and Commercial Words 

Short cuts that will compare with any in 
the world. 

How to Build a Fine Vocabulary Quickly 

Not yet offered for sale to the public, but 
will be marketed in January, 1919. This 
is something new in the uses and beau¬ 
ties of etymology. 

How to Be Sure of Correct Spelling 
This book is also withheld from the mar¬ 
ket until 1919. It shows how to use the 
sense of sight, the sense of sound and the 
reasoning powers in learning how to 
spell. 

The Story of Grammar and Punctuation 

Told in shorthand notes to insure accu¬ 
racy in writing G. A. B. Shorthand. 








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